The 4th coat of mud ended up being good enough for me in the alcove at the back of the garage. I sanded it down one last time and tried hard to ignore the few remaining blemishes as I swept, vacuumed, brushed, blew, and wiped dust off the walls before priming. I don't think I'll try as hard on the rest of the walls, though. I figure I'm way more likely to spend time standing still at the workbench back in that corner than anywhere else in the garage, so that's probably where I'd notice the most defects in my work. That, and the fact that finishing sheetrock is thankless, shitty work that I'd like to be done with as soon as possible.
I used Valspar primer from Lowes to prime the walls. It has surprisingly good reviews on their website, which I didn't read until after I got home and was second-guessing my purchase. The Valspar is the cheapest primer they sell - cheaper than Kilz and especially the Bulls-eye brand - and I bought it to save money but was concerned that I'd be in for more work or a worse result. But the reviews made me feel better, and sure enough, that stuff is great. It rolls out nicely and covered every single thing on those walls in one coat. I highly recommend it.
I'm not as pleased with the paint so far. I spent a lot of time at Home Depot looking at the 5-gal buckets of the "contractor" grade paint - the stuff used for spraying the inside of apartments and tract homes, I guess - trying not just to perform a decent cost-benefit analysis so much as trying to talk myself out of buying the most expensive paint because, again, this is a freaking garage, man. I ultimately picked Glidden 440-something-something, which was not expensive but still a couple of steps up from the crappiest choice. I painted one coat over the primer and it just didn't cover very well, in my opinion. Maybe I was just spoiled by the primer working so well, I dunno. I was already prepared to do at least two coats, so I guess it's not that big of a deal, but I'm left wondering what the Valspar equivalent paint at Lowes would have been like.
Oh well. It's coming along, anyway. I'm starting to feel like I'm finishing something, which will hopefully motivate me to keep going with the mudding, sanding, etc. There's a lot of that left to do. And now, pictures...
In the first two you can really see the difference between the paint and primer on the outside (left) wall. The primer looked pretty white to me when I rolled it on, but it's actually a light gray. I just didn't notice until I rolled the white paint. After I took the pictures I cut in all the edges, but ran out of time and energy to roll a second coat on.
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