Fresh Start Primer Review. Benjamin Moore Paint Reviewed.

this chris idaho painter here on paint live tv we're going to be putting benjamin moore's fresh start all-purpose high hiding primer an interior exterior product to the test we're going to be doing an accent wall so we're going to be testing the product we're going to be giving a review of it is this a product that you should be using is it a product you should invest your money in we're gonna give you our opinion in our review right here on paintlifetv so stay tuned for this video [Applause] [Music] all right we managed to make it out here to our a job site where we're working on this accent wall and we've got this accent while we're painting from the bead board right up here we're going to be painting this an accent color so i'm going to talk about you know uh primers in general i'm going to talk about one aspect of primers primers uh they promote adhesion so if you're gonna have any type of adhesion issues yes you're going to need a primer this wall right here has been a freshly painted white wall it's flat paint and do i need to prime this wall if i'm going over with an interior paint over the top of that i do not need to prime that wall because i don't have any adhesion issues it's a freshly coated painted surface now if this wall itself was say a high gloss paint or a semi-gloss paint or some type of trim paint on there that would cause my top coat going over the top of that to probably have some type of adhesion issues it wouldn't bond very well i'm going to need to prime that to get a good bite or a good bond with my top coat if i have any type of contaminants on this wall if i've got a grease on the wall if i've got anything on this wall that could cause any type of adhesion issues then yes i'm going to need a primer on this wall itself now once again this is a freshly coated wall it's nicely done it doesn't have any adhesion issues under this fresh coat of paint putting a top coat right over the top of that does not require a primer so i'm going to give you a look at what this looks like now i've got my gray and once again any type of uh your gray color you don't want the gray to be too dark and you want the gray to be too light and a um especially like i did a lime green wall i did a candy apple red wall those two and this color works really well you can see here's white and now there's my gray color right there and that this gray color right here works out really well with a lot of ultra deep colors especially vibrant colors when it comes to giving you a nice even undercoat um for your a base coat basically and essentially basically i don't know all right so i'm gonna get ready and start doing this accent wall we'll give you a look at what it's going to look like we're going to give you a look at what the fresh start primer going on here is going to look like as our undercoat i'm going to want to mask we're not doing any painting here i don't want any splatter you know dripping down on my bead board we are putting this fresh start paint to the test we're going to see how splatter resistant it is as we're painting right along here so i'm just going to mask off i don't want anything bleeding onto my trim so i'd be using frog tape here to keep any primer from bleeding on my trim i typically when i'm doing my undercoat or primer coat on an accent well i'm not going to be touching my tape but i'm applying my tape just in case the stop splatters [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] all right now i'm going to give you some of my final thoughts about benjamin moore's fresh start primer we've been using the product now and i just got done doing an accent wall and i'm gonna give you some of the thoughts about using the product on that accent well i'm gonna start off by saying one of the things i do really like about the primer is that it is tintable so this is a white a base and they also have a deep base and you can tint both of the products so if you want it tinted a really dark color you can tint it a dark color and if you're going to use a lighter color like this it is tentable and that's uh that comes into play when you're gonna be doing really dark accent walls or vibrant colors it's really important to get a good undercoat so it's tentable and i really like that this fresh start is tintable so another thing i do like about the product uh we did tent it i put um some black in there we got a great undercoat you know for our accent wall and the the product covered absolutely amazing so the gray covered amazing and the white cover is amazing so if you want a primer that covers really well so if you're going over the top of a dark color or vibrant color and you want that to cover well this product is going to be a product that's going to perform really well for you another thing that was really high on my list is is splattering or spattering paints that splatter or spatter are messy paints they do just cause you all kinds of headaches and once again you just stand a chance of getting paint on the floors if you're not dropping things or just getting paint all over the place in general especially if you're painting overhead i do gotta say the accent wall that we were painting i had this tinted i think i had two ounces of black put in there to make this a p4 gray and after rolling that wall i didn't notice any splatter or spatter on the tape or the paper or on the drop cloth at all so i think it's spatter resistance is absolutely amazing another thing that's really important when it comes to primers is the primer's ability to bond to the surface that it's going over and one thing i noticed with this product it did bond extremely well and one of those just unscientific tests that i typically do is if i get paint on my hands yo how well does it clean off i did get some of the primer all over my hands and it was extremely difficult to get off um i did some scratch tests and adhesion tests on the walls it was definitely on there for good it's a great primer when it comes to its bonding capabilities so i guess one final thing that i'll hit when it comes to the primer is uh that i did really like about it is its dry time so it did dry pretty uh fast i wouldn't say it's the fastest prime fastest drying primer that i've ever used before but it did dry relatively quick we were doing a small accent wall i think i could have re-coated over the accent wall within an hour some of that's going to be determined by you know heat and humidity if you need to paint over it fast just crank up that heat get rid of some of the humidity and it's going to dry really fast for you so it did a dry really quickly and um i did like that about the primer so a couple other things i do want to touch on is the odor of the product so the odor it didn't have a very strong odor at all when i was using the product and there are a lot of primers out there just by the nature of the product um the chemicals that go into primers they typically do smell really strong have strong odors uh this was a pretty low odor product in my opinion and for me i kind of am sensitive to smells now as i've been painting for so many years some products give me headaches when i'm around them you know uh for you know extended periods of time but this the product didn't have a bad odor didn't have a strong odor the other thing is it is a water-based product now i'm uh i i just really don't like solvent-based coatings because of the strong odors and because of the difficult um cleanup of the products and stuff and typically some of the tools like the rollers and stuff like that you're not going to be able to clean them up you're going to have to throw them away it's really difficult to clean up the brushes and in a lot of places solvent-based coatings there's a lot of rules and regulations to using those products so i did really like it that it was a water-based product also all right a couple other things i just want to you know bring up the primer itself it's an interior exterior acrylic primer and it is uh provides a mildew resistant coating and that's going to come into play if you're painting bathrooms a lot of bathrooms you know um in certain areas in high humidity areas along the coast and stuff like that they'll have mold and mildew issues you can resolve the mold and mildew mildew issue getting rid of it then you can use this as an undercoat to your top coat and it would provide a mildew resistant coating so it's really good for that if you're um searching out a primer that is mildew resistant all right so i'm just going to give you uh just going to pull off a few of the key points on the back of the can because i know i'll probably get some questions about the product itself try to answer those questions right here the coverage i always get people asking about coverage it covers four to five hundred square feet per gallon the dry time it states is one hour to the touch to recode is two hours we're always pushing those limits um i'm typically gonna paint right over this stuff as soon as it's you know obtainable over the top and the the dry time one hour and two hours to the touch is really gonna uh vary according to how dry it is where you are and the humidity levels soap and water cleanup use warm water and soap to clean up and um it does say maybe tinted with up to two ounces of benjamin morgenex colorants per gallon so if you have it tinted make sure whoever the benjamin moore authorized dealer that they're putting in um gen x colorants on it and um it's got a wide variety of uses and applications and it does say um do not thin the product and um and it says apply one to two coats when you're using the product so there's a few of the specifications on the back and hopefully that may answer any questions you may have about the product so a couple of things i want to touch on with the product you know that i noticed with the product one of them was uh some micro bubbling that i had uh in the the product itself when i opened up the can i poured it into my pan to start rolling it from my accent wall and notice in the pan there's some bubbles in the pan started rolling it on the wall got some micro bubbling on the wall and i have a feeling that's related to the tint that was put in the product the tent caused it to just bubble a little bit i rolled out the walls the bubbles popped there wasn't any issues with it you know on the top coat another thing just want to touch on is the product's ability to hang now it's really important to get a product that hangs really well so you don't get runs especially when you're doing you know cut-ins there's nothing worse than going back and having to fix runs now i put a lot of tent in this to get it tinted as a white base and i got a couple runs and one of the things i noticed is the product covers so well you don't have to put on as much and so i was getting you know a few runs here and there because i was putting it on super heavy wanting it to cover you know in one coat which i didn't need to because it covered absolutely amazing so just a little bit of a learning curve one thing you'll figure out is the product covers so well you don't have to put it on heavy and um by not putting it on heavy you're not going to get those runs so you know um just notice that you know with its ability to hang all right so to the end of the video now this product we're going to grade this product is this something you should purchase is it something you should use we've got our ladder we're going to put it to the ladder test where is it going to fall on the ladder is it a top run product a bottom rung product or a middle rung product so i got to say you know right off the bat this is a product i definitely like to use in and i would definitely recommend using it's like a lot of benjamin moore's products i've used quite a few of their products and they make absolutely amazing products it's rare that i ever run into anything from benjamin moore that isn't good this is a primer that performs extremely well it's an all-purpose primer it's something that i would use day in and day out the price i think i paid for this gallon i got it at my local um hardware store uh i think it's an ace hardware a true value hardware store um right here downtown eagle once again i think i paid 41 a gallon for it it was worth every penny i think this is a top tier product this is something that i would put on the top rung right there and i would highly recommend you using it if you need a primer for uh your day in and day out projects interior or exterior if you've ever used this product if you got any tips or tricks about the product or if you got any comments about the products just leave it down in the comment section below we would love to hear about uh your thoughts about the product good or bad we learn from you just like you learn from us if you've enjoyed this video if you've learned anything about it give us a thumbs up it really encourages us to keep making these videos and um we're going to make another video so hopefully you will see you right here on paint life tv out