So that's why it's call a chip brush.

Today, I made it back to the house to take another stab at priming the dining room after yesterday's abortive attempt with the Wagner Power Sprayer.  In about 30 minutes more time (and with even more paint on me), I finished priming the dining room ceiling white and the walls gray. With the darker colors that we've chosen, we'll get better coverage using a gray primary rather than the usual white.

The other day, our friend, Joel, said he used a foam roller to paint popcorn ceilings.  So last night when I made my trip to Home Depot to pickup a paint roller, I grabbed some.

The foam roller is the bomb!  Easy coverage of the big popcorn texture on the ceiling.  The only downside was every once in a while a stray piece of texture would get stuck in between the slices that are in the foam.  My other new favorite item are the disposable paint pan inserts.  Clean up has always been a chore when you finish and these little $.77 items are worth the price.  When you done, just empty the paint back into the can and toss the liner.

A couple of weeks ago, I'd also bought a 15 pack of chip brushes.  The cheap little things are great for areas that don't require a really good brush.... like those little chips out of the wall that I missed when I spackled the holes in the wall.

Here's a four corner review of the dining room after priming this evening.

In these photos, the primer isn't dry yet but the coverage was unbelievable.  These walls were filthy and the gray primer covered everything right up.

I'd thought we'd wasted our effort putting plastic over the windows and doorway once I decided not to use the sprayer.  But rollers inevitably splatter paint and this plastic means we won't have to scrap the splatters off the windows later.

That's the smoke detector above the entranceway and the thermostat right next to it.