Painting the shop

[sharpshooter]

I have noticed several of you guys have painted two tone schemes on your walls. I was just curious how you guys get the line straight. Did you use lasers or just measure and mark??? Im getting ready to start finishing the dry wall and then I will start painting. I was wanting to do the bottom one color and the top another, maybe with a stripe in between, but Im thinking its gonna be a real PITA.

 

[72chevy]

Good info here...

Tips for painting straight strips on walls
http://www.garagejournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=16530

Wall stripes, paint & designs
http://www.garagejournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=3777

 

[R1Jester]

I used a laser level and made small pencil marks and then used Frog tape, it's a green painters tape. It stops the paint from seeping much better than the blue tape did. It wasn't too difficult to do, worst part was marking all the level lines, painting was the easy part.

Picture from when I painted it(it's a lot more organized now)

 

[sharpshooter]

Thx man ....

 

[hidollartoys]

No real reason for a laser. You can do ok by measuring down from the ceiling and then connecting the dots with a straight edge.

 

[sharpshooter]

if the ceiling is perfectly level

 

[PAToyota]

I use a water level - more accurate than the lasers that I've been around except for the prohibitively expensive ones...

 

[rustech]

I also just got finished painting all my walls Semi-Gloss White and plan on putting a couple stripes around. I've been thinking about how to do this as well and decided that I would:
1. Pick a point that will be at the height I want the line
2. Use a laser level that runs through the point
3. Use a long level on the wall to verify the accuracy of the laser and adjust as necessary
4. Mark the line
5. Continue the line around the garage using the same technique...starting on the back wall and working forward will have less room for error.

I think this would work well but plan on reading what others have done as well.

 

[car99r]

I used a laser level to do mine but then realized when taping off that it was not totally level after 20', therefore I just started at a point and useda 4' level and went around the room making marks about every 2-3'.

I then used regular 3M masking tape and put on 2' at top and bottom and 1" for my 2 centers. I then painted over the tape with left over wall paint to seal the edges. I have OSB walls so I did two coats of the wall paint but I would imagine on drywall 1 coat would be fine to seal the edges.

 

[sharpshooter]

sealing the tape....good idea