A few more fundamentals about painting:
Primer: if you are having to change the color (say that first time you’re putting your nice standard white down and the old color was brown or blue) you’ll want to put a coat of primer down first. If it is something dark (forest green, black, navy blue) you’ll never get anywhere without primer. Try painting a dark green wall with a light color but no primer, and you’ll be putting down six or seven coats and still see the green bleed through (learn from my mistakes). Once you get your white established, you shouldn’t need to prime again. Primer is thinner than paint, dries quickly, and creates a surface that the paint likes to adhere evenly to (better coverage). Don’t worry if the primer coat doesn’t look like a layer of even paint or that the color underneath is showing through, as long as you covered the entire surface.
Texture: There are different textures of paint, from flat to glossy, that include variations like satin, eggshell and semi-gloss. You want to keep life simple, and gloss and semi-gloss are usually not good choices for rental units. Eggshell is a compromise, but not available in all paints. The advantage of semi-gloss is that it is easier to clean. The advantage of flat is that it hides imperfections in the surface better. While cleaning semi-gloss might sound like a good idea (if doing a little cleaning might save you from having to paint, right?), it usually doesn’t work out that way. Tenants are hard on paint, and usually scuffing, dirt, shoe prints (we once found a perfect shoe print at the top of a wall), etc. are beyond recovery from mere cleaning, and you still have to repaint with semi-gloss. Most landlords end up realizing that flat is the best, at least for the walls. We do compromise by using satin on trim and doors (satin is a little more flat than semi-gloss). The inevitable hand prints on doors and door trim might be cleanable. Also flat is to some people irritating to the touch, so on those surfaces like doors and trim that will get regularly touched, it comes across a little better to some. If you really want to keep it simple, though, just make everything either flat or satin. One final reason for avoiding semi-gloss/gloss, is that the flat provides a better surface for your inevitable next layer of paint to adhere to (unless you just enjoy sanding).
So, what brand of primer and paint do I use? Kilz is widely recognized as a superior primer, and we were impressed. We were so impressed, that when Kilz began making paints, we tried them. And were impressed again. It did as well getting the job done in one coat as anything else we’d used, and the container is well-designed. The cap can be used to hold small amounts of paint (perfect for keeping you moving faster when cutting in with brushes), and it has a catch that brings excess paint from when you pour (or paint you had in the cap when you put it back on) back into the container, instead of running down the side like we’re so used to with traditional paint cans. It even has nice touches like a handle that won’t cut into your skin like the thin wire does on traditional cans. Kilz primer is available at all sorts of hardware and paint and department outlets. Kilz paint, though, is only available at Wal-Mart. Also, Kilz tends to stock all their textures equally, even though I’ve discovered that I’m not the only landlord partial to their flat white interior. Sometimes it sells out, so we tend to stock up when it’s available (and sometimes you can find it in 5-gallon containers).
Next: preparation and execution, and where you can cut some corners.
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