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Sooner or later, every adult must come to terms with a paintbrush.
It could be when landlord says he will paint your apartment according to the lease schedule — once every 10 years. Or when you realize the industrial taupe sprayed on your townhouse and hundreds of others is making you clinically depressed. Or when you buy a house and rue the term "fixer-upper."
Get over it. Yes, you could pay someone to do your dirty work. But wouldn't the money be better spent on a Caribbean vacation? Here's a primer on priming:
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PAINT
Matte or satin? High-gloss, semi-gloss, low luster? Don't buy paint without a serious chat with a paint store expert. Each type goes on different walls and rooms.
You will need to buy white primer and enough paint for two coats. Yes, sadly, you need three coats in all. If you have new drywall, the wall is thirsty and soaks up the paint. If you are painting on an old wall over another color, that color will bleed through without primer and two coats. (Doubters, put the second coat on and wait a few days, then look.)
Only if you are putting white on white, or an intense color over white, can you get away with just primer and one coat.
Tell the store the dimensions of the room; they will estimate how much you need. Custom colors — the vast majority of colors, those mixed from different hues — are not returnable, so if your room area is on the fence between cans, buy the lesser amount.
Ceilings require a specific matte paint — for a reason. I went cheap one time, used the remnants of another white paint can to finish. White is white, right? We ended up with a disco high-gloss on one-fourth of our living room ceiling.
Ceiling paint cans say splatter-less but that just means it splatters LESS than regular paint, which splatters ALL THE TIME. So wear a hat or bandanna, as well as a T-shirt and shorts you can afford to toss. Accept the fact that your hair, your glasses and your body will be coated with tiny white flecks every time you venture forth.
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EQUIPMENT
Rollers rule, both in speed and giving the smoothest finish. Paintbrushes streak too much. Save them for the trim. Along with an extendable 9-inch roller (so you can do ceilings without constantly being on a ladder), get a 3-inch roller for smaller spaces and a corner brush (shaped like a V).
Don't bother to reuse rollers — that creates a lumpy, uneven finish. You can reuse paintbrushes but only if they are completely dry. I used a semi-dry brush this fall and ended up with primer than ran in streaks all the way down the wall. Peeling off those clumps left mini-holes that never did go away, even with two coats of color.
I also tripped up buying rollers. In my zeal to do the best job possible, I got the thickest roller nap — 3/4 inch.
"What the heck are you painting?" the hardware guy asked.
Turns out the thickest nap is reserved for the roughest surfaces, say a cement garage floor.
For interior walls, choose a roller with 3/8 nap.
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GET ROLLING
Before making a move, cover every inch of the floor and your furniture in plastic — latex paint is drawn to fabric like moth to flame. Sometimes you can immediately wash it off, other times it spreads like an oil slick as you scrub.
Paint the corners first, so when you paint the walls there will be no streaks or drips in the corner. Do the walls before trim, because then you don't have to swathe the trim in painting tape as you flail away on the walls.
Tape the edges of the walls before doing the trim. Buy at least 1 1/2-inch wide painting tape. Thinner tape is cheaper but we amateurs need every inch of that safety net.
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A WORD ABOUT LADDERS
Respect the ladder, whether it's a footstool or a professional skywalker. As I painted the outside of my house this summer, on the highest possible step of my neighbor's 28-foot monster, people actually stopped to chat.
What were they thinking? That I could turn around and chat? My legs were cramping, I had a death grip on the metal rung and a fear of heights so intense I had taken off my glasses so I couldn't see the ground. I was mere inches away from accidentally dumping a paint can on their head and catapulting over to the next lawn.
"I really can't talk right now," I said.
That didn't stop them. "You're so high up!" "How's the weather?" "You missed a spot." All the world's a comic when you are immobile, but yelling "shut up!" would have thrown off my balance.
On that note:
— On high ladders, your weight significantly affects its stability — and for the physics-challenged, the higher you are the more unstable the ladder. Make sure the footing of the ladder is secure — I put a bag of topsoil or something equally heavy on the first rung and test it so the ladder's footing cannot slide backwards or sideways. If the ladder has one, put the built-in step lock on.
— Never go higher than the warning step and keep your weight balanced on both feet. Reaching to the side could put too much weight on one foot, which can tip the ladder sideways.
— Realize that most problems happen when you climb up or down, so figure out how to minimize your movement.
— Smaller ladders and footstools need respect too. Bathroom tile floors are especially slippery when covered in plastic sheeting. I didn't so much as break a nail when I was on the monster ladder, but I needed seven stitches in the head when I fell in the bathroom and hit the vanity on the way down.
— Aluminum ladders do have crumpling points — which my 230-pound brother discovered as he and friends tried to hoist a couch into the third-floor window of his Baltimore row house. We are all still amazed he didn't crack his head open as he hit the sidewalk.
And my house? I gave up at the top of the second story windows, left a bathtub ring of paint around the house for two weeks, then hired a professional to finish the third floor.
To misquote Shakespeare, knowing when to retreat is the better part of valor.
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asap contributor Sheila Norman-Culp is an AP supervisory editor. | 
