Let's talk Primer

Okay guys, I know that priming and sanding are not the fun parts of painting furniture, but it has to be done or your result won't work out for you or look how you want. Now when painting with whites or light colour's  you can lightly sand and clean the piece, you don't have to heavily sand because you are using primer. This will also prevent the bleed through when you haven't sanded down to the raw wood. When using dark colour's and black you don't have to use primer, but you do have to sand and clean so that the paint can adhere well. Wise Owl now have clear primer so that you can still use primer with dark colour's and you can distress that piece if that's your vision.  Wise Owl Primer can also be used in a sprayer and let me tell you it sprays amazingly, I will get to that soon and explain briefly. Just to explain what bleed through is: It is the natural tannin's that come through raw wood or stains that have been settled in wood or veneer and comes through any type of paint as a beige colour. As you can see above there are two pictures, the first one is the first coat of Wise Owl primer and the second picture is the second coat. Now when you open up the can of primer you will notice a little beige colour this is normal and you just need to stir it up. All primers need stirring and they need a really good stir because most of the good primer is at the bottom especially if its a primer that doesn't contain a huge amount of bad chemicals. This is what to expect and not all the Wise Owl primer cans have it but you just need to stir up what got settled at the bottom. Now I've been seeing a lot of questions " does this look normal when its this thin"? yes its normal. Wise Owl primer goes on thinly the first coat, you then wait 3-4 hours to apply the second coat. Sometimes you'll see the bleed through come through on the first coat and that is fine. then apply your second  coat and this goes on much thicker and if you need a third coat then that's fine too. This also helps if you're doing white or any light colour, applying primer prevents you from having to do 5 coats of white and it also helps in my opinion the paint go on really smoothly and easily, plus your coverage will be great because you'll only need about two coats of paint. After your second coat leave it for 3-4 hours again and then apply paint. If you find you have small areas of bleed through after the second coat and they are just really stubborn you can apply a third  coat or prime where you find stubborn bleed through spots.
Back to spraying primer: I will do a longer blog post on this subject, but spraying primer you always always need to strain your primer and paint. I use a dollar store strainer but you can buy paint strainers from Lowes or Home Depot. I don't add water to primer, but I do with paint and its just a little. Same process as painting primer, you wait between coats. I will go into this more deeply and what sprayer I use on my next blog post. If you have questions please don't hesitate to email me or message me on my Facebook page.
Thank you for reading and I hope you have a lovely day.