Paint Sprayers?

are great if you need to paint a whole house, or you're doing major production work. For one-offs for yourself and friends, it's a lot of expense and hassle for small payoff.

They're also mildly challenging to use and get good results. Once you learn the technique, the results follow naturally.

I don't know about the sprayer and how it would work on furniture, but I can agree with claydowling that the concept is great for large projects, not so much for small.

We have a power roller (Wagner - not sure the model) and it works great - great coverage, pretty easy to use. But it sucks up a lot of paint, and I mean a lot! So when we painted our large living room/dining room/vaulted ceilings/entryway area, it was a huge help. You're not carrying around trays to spill, the thing has a shoulder strap to make it easy to carry, etc. It just keeps pumping and you go fast. But then when you're done you have to clean out all of the tubing and parts and you lose a lot of paint, way more than a traditional roller system, which is already a lot if you use the really fluffy ones. Not worth it for say a small bedroom.

Also, we got it for $10 at a garage sale, so we didn't have to invest much as far as that.

I would think the sprayer would have the same problem - working from one project to another with different colors you'll have a lot of cleanup and a lot of wasted paint, but if you're doing a lot in the same color (maybe a whole bedroom set? large modular shelving/media) then it might be worth it to make things go faster.

Hopefully you'll get some answers here on how well the sprayers work finish wise..

Sprayers do great finishing, but this isn't that kind of sprayer, and those kinds of projects aren't built with wood from the home center. Professional wood finishing, when done with a sprayer, uses a high pressure sprayer or a high volume, low pressure sprayer. It won't tend to be used to spray paint. More likely to use a resin finish like polyurethane or lacquer.

The book I referenced elsewhere, Finishing 101, has a lot of good information about this.

I just did a nice laptop stand that I finished with an HVLP sprayer (cheap conversion gun from Harbor Freight). There are definitely things about it that are good, but there's a pretty respectable learning curve. I have some distance to go yet. I got a better result using the same finish on my desktop book rack (a.k.a. Football Bat), and applying it with a foam brush. It's very easy to create runs and sags with a sprayer, a problem I didn't have with the brush.

The upside is that when you're applying a gloss finish, it's hard to beat the sprayer. Definitely the glossiest coat I've ever put on.

If you're going to be building a lot of stuff, the sprayer is probably worth it. Just understand that you can't spray latex paint easily, even though there are plenty of other finishes and stains you can spray.