Painting Tips

I had a con­ver­sa­tion the other day with a friend of mine about paint­ing and it inspired me to write this post about painting.

In the con­ver­sa­tion I was dis­cussing some tips about paint­ing that I had learned from some of my exten­sive expe­ri­ence work­ing with paint and what I have noticed to be some of the most com­mon mis­takes that peo­ple make while paint­ing in their house.

Some of these include:

• Buy­ing cheap equip­ment, roller cov­ers, roller frames, pans and espe­cially brushes.
• Buy­ing cheap paint, (there are very few places in a house that I would ever use an inex­pen­sive paint.) The qual­ity of paint is very important.
• Dip­ping the brush into the paint way too far, over­load­ing the brush.
• Press­ing down on the roller in order cover more area with­out reloading.
• Allow­ing paint to dry on the equipment.

Going through these one by one; Paint­ing equip­ment for paint­ing rooms in a house­hold is not that expen­sive, even for the high qual­ity.  If you take care of the high qual­ity equip­ment you may very well never have to replace it. I had one brush that I used on a reg­u­lar basis for over 8 years until some­one bor­rowed it and didn’t wash it out. It was an expen­sive brush as brushes go but the life that I got out of it was more than worth it and you will notice a big dif­fer­ence in how the brush per­forms as well. Cheap Roller cov­ers have a ten­dency to shed a lot and will leave some of the nap in your fin­ish. The good roller frames have bet­ter bear­ings and heav­ier cages.

The qual­ity of paint is a big deal, it is also impor­tant to use a paint that is designed for the spe­cific area and mate­r­ial that you are using it on. I have my favorite brands of paint that I do rec­om­mend and use but I will not get into that here. (If you’re curi­ous you can ask me about it). Even with a good brand of paint it is imper­a­tive that you choose the right type of paint. A good paint sup­plier should be able to tell you what paint will work the best for the sit­u­a­tion that you are using it for.

Over­load­ing a brush is one that causes me night­mares. See­ing some­one dip a brush right up to the hilt and then won­der why they drip paint every­where and they have a whole lot of runs in the painted sur­face. I never dip a brush into the paint more than half an inch, most of the time only a quar­ter inch. Keep­ing the paint at the tip of the brush allows you to con­trol the paint much more effec­tively, both while the brush is trav­el­ing from the can to the sur­face and while you are try­ing to cut in around trim. This also makes clean­ing the brush out later a whole lot easier.

Press­ing down on the roller……. This cre­ates a cou­ple of prob­lems with the fin­ished sur­face. The edges of the roller leave trails in the paint that will dry into lines in the fin­ish, your roller begins to miss the tiny inden­ta­tions of the sur­face and your fin­ish tex­ture will start to have a lot of vari­ances. Instead, with the roller freshly loaded, draw a “W” in an area of the wall about three feet square or less and then roll back over it fill­ing it in. Ass soon as your roller starts to miss a lot of spots, stop and reload it. Usu­ally I can fin­ish a com­plete three foot square per load­ing of the roller (depend­ing on the sur­face being painted). Believe it or not this method is a lot faster and the fin­ished prod­uct is a much bet­ter look.

To avoid let­ting paint dry on any of your equip­ment I rec­om­mend that you start by doing ALL of your cut­ting in around trim with the brush first. Once the entire area is cut in, wash out the brush com­pletely until it looks like new. THEN, get out your roller and fin­ish the bulk sur­faces. Qual­ity roller cover can be washed out and reused sev­eral times. Use a curved putty knife to squeeze out as much paint as pos­si­ble and then rinse the roller until it’s com­pletely clear of paint. Spin the excess water out of the roller cover and stand it upright or hang it to dry.

Allow­ing paint to sit on a brush or roller for even ten to fif­teen min­utes can allow paint to start crust­ing on them and it can be dif­fi­cult to get it off. The dry paint also effects how well the equip­ment per­forms for the rest of the job.

So, these are just some tips that I hope will help to make your paint­ing expe­ri­ence a lit­tle more enjoy­able and help you to have bet­ter results. There is still a lot more to paint­ing than what is here but most of the rest comes with a lot of prac­tice and patience.