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Wednesday, November 18, 2015

HOUSE PAINTING


HOUSE PAINTING
In a recent post, I alluded to a short stint as a part time professional house painter.  Most people think house painting is easy.  Most people will attempt to save some dough and become DIY painters.  They can do an OK job, but the professionals will do it better.

I was never good at house painting.  House painting takes patience; I always want to get right to it…no reason to waste time with prep work, expensive materials or appropriate tools.  WRONG!!

Prep work is essential

PREPARE THE SURACE- It is a waste of time to paint over  walls that are dirty, have flaking old paint and have cracks and holes.  Clean, sand and patch, or don’t bother painting.

TAPE EDGES: Unless you are a real pro, you have to tape off those edges…not me.  I keep a rag handy and just wipe down my misses (no, not my Mrs.).  This leaves paint on the rag which when hanging from my pocket hits against walls and occasionally un-covered furniture (see below) and makes a mess.  When I wipe my brow I get paint on my face, and before long the paint in the rag makes wiping errors away fruitless.

REMOVE OR COVER EVERYTHING: Amateurs using a roller create a rooster tail effect of flying paint. Newspapers are not good enough.  Paint goes on newspaper, foot goes on paper, paper rips and follows you around the house leaving a trail of paint.

Use quality materials-

PAINT: You think you save money using inexpensive paint, but the extra time and extra coats needed to cover will prove you wrong.

PAINT BRUSH: Why pay for an expensive brush for one job?  No streaking, no brush hairs on the wall, less dripping, and with correct care and maintenance the brush will be good for many, many jobs.  You also need multiple brushes, tapered for cutting in, two inch for molding and small areas and four inch for walls if you are not rolling.

LADDERS: Oh for God sake, do not reach on a ladder that is too short or even worse balance on a chair.

PAINT BUCKET- Do not paint out of the can, use a tapered paint bucket.  A paint bucket does not collect drips on the side.  Drips on the side will find their way anyplace but where you want them.  A tapered bucket also allows you to better slap excessive paint from your brush.  Excessive paint on the brush works its way to the top of the brush and squeezes out dripping the floor, your hand and everything.

BE AWARE-

KNOW WHERE THE PAINT CAN AND LID ARE AT ALL TIMES: If you do not follow this rule, you will step on the lid and track paint throughout the house, and you will trip over the can and spill mass quantities of paint all over.

USE PROPER TEQUNIQUE-

PROPER BRUSH STROKES: Use long strokes in only one back and forth direction and always keep the brush or roller loaded with paint, beyond that, I’ve got nothing.

The final hint took me several years to learn, but it might be the best advice.

HIRE A PRO: Everyone thinks they can paint, few really can.  If you can afford it, hire a pro.  Do not hire kids or part timers.  Hire someone that has been painting full time and makes a living out of it.

Is there anyone on the Earth covered by Benjamin Moore that does not have at least one story about a paint job gone bad?   

21 comments:

  1. i agree - hire someone. the prep and caulking alone is enough to drive me to drink before i ever start slapping paint around. and around. ugh!

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  2. I'm guilty of almost everything bad on your list. I paint over dirt, flaking paint, spiders and even snails once in the garden (although I did clean them off with the hosepipe and a toothbrush ...). I just get a bit over excited and want to get on with it. I used some very old paint when I decorated my kitchen. I thought I'd be able to brush the lumps out of it - I was wrong ...

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  3. This is why, when i do paint, i go very slowly, so i will do it correctly. It's better to go slowly than to have to go over it again and again is what they told me when i was volunteering at the Habitat house.

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  4. My husband and I do all our painting, but we've been at it since 1990 and have painted every room in each house at least once, so I think of us as professionals now. I agree with all your tips, but I've found a good wooden chair to be sturdier and easier to balance on than a ladder.

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  5. I absolutely hate painting. In the five years we've been in our house we've only painted the living room and hallway. Fortunately my best friend loves painting and is good at it, so she did most of it. That's why it looks good! :-) All I really had to do was make her lasagna.

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  6. Its an art to be a painter; I don't have that talent :) I know when to bring in the pros :)

    betty

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  7. It is hard work and I refuse to paint anything. I will hire a pro to do that. I've seen some awful messes for the cheap folks that want to save some bucks. Terrible.

    Have a fabulous day Joe. ☺

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  8. I don't mind the painting.
    I truly dislike the prep and the cleanup.
    It's all true what you wrote.
    From here on out someone else can do it.
    I will just pick the color.

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  9. yeah, if you're gonna hire a pro hire for good, not price. There's a lot of terrible high priced and a lot of great cheapos out there .....

    Then again, if you do it well yourself you don't have to haggle to get small booboos fixed ..... and I hate haggling.

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  10. My last painter happily fixed every small mistake I found & I ended up with a PERFECT job!!

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  11. I taught my husband to tape, with masking tape, the only tool available in the sixties. We did not get back to the peeling off part for a week or so, and the tape baked on. Then it had to be removed with a razor blade.

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  12. I just watched a big crew paint my neighbor's house (exterior). They did all the professional stuff you cite and it took a solid week.

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  13. My old father in law was a master painter and passed a few tips to his sons, so my hubby and oldest daughter were able to paint the interiors of our house after it was built. They did a great job. When FIL was alive he had a business and was very much in demand, one of his grandsons learned from him and I think took over the business.

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  14. P.S. where I live now has a bad paint job. Looks okay at first, because the colour is the same as what was there before, but then you start to notice missed patches, and the fact the paint was slapped on without first cleaning or repairing.

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  15. I don't paint. I just move to a new place...

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  16. I painted my 10-speed bicycle white with red stripes, to look like a candy cane. Except that paint my dad got me wasn't true red, but more orangey. Still, I had no trouble finding my bike in the rack at college. I rode it two miles to school every day, and locked it up tight. Because everybody wanted an orange candy-cane 10-speed.

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  17. My attempts at painting were tragic.

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  18. I finished painting the ceiling in the kitchen and it looked great until Mother filled a syringe with pink medicine and accidently pushed the plunger. The pink stripe on the ceiling didn't look too bad until she tried to clean it off with her mop.

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