Nine Tricks That Will Make Painting Any Room Much Easier
Paint is one of the cheapest ways to renovate your home: it freshens things up, covers up old chips and scratches, and can make your entire home look brand new in just a few days. Even if you hire someone to paint the room, the cost won’t be too high, averaging between $350 and $850 per room. This is fairly inexpensive compared to other remodeling projects, but still requires significant changes. Since painting tends to be part of most people’s DIY skill set, many people decide to take a weekend, buy masking tape, and tackle the job themselves. If this is you, here are some tips to make the job a little easier.
Liquid masking tape
If you’re painting a room with windows or any other glass features, you know how tedious it can be to apply traditional masking tape along the edges of the glass (plus it’s tedious having to scrape paint off the glass anyway due to carelessness). This is where liquid painter’s tape comes into play: you apply it to the windows (you don’t have to worry about getting it on the trim because it will act as a primer coat on everything but glass), let it dry, then apply paint, let it dry, and then just peel off the painter’s tape like you would plastic wrap. As you can see here , this works great and will save you a lot of time.
Catch the drops
Paint the ceiling? Sorry to hear that – be prepared to be completely covered in paint as it drips on you, and you’ll want to cover everything in the room with a heavy-duty drop cloth.
That is, unless you use an upside-down umbrella. It may sound silly, but it actually works: make a hole in the umbrella, stick a paint roller handle through, tape it shut, and start painting the ceiling. The umbrella will catch all the paint drips, so you can paint the entire ceiling without worrying about scraping tiny paint drops off every surface the next day. Pro tip: Buy a cheap clear plastic umbrella so you can see what you’re doing. Alternatively, a clear plastic paint tray liner can do the same job while requiring less space to maneuver.
Dirty paint tray
At some point you may have been advised to line your paint tray with a cheap plastic liner or any plastic bag you had lying around (or even aluminum foil). Yes, this will save you from having to do a lot of cleaning, but the real advice is to not clean the paint tray at all. Pour the excess paint back into the can and simply let the tray dry. A layer of old paint will not affect the usefulness of the tray.
Cardboard method
Painting your flooring can be a real challenge. You can either spend a lot of time putting painter’s tape around the entire edge of the room to protect the floor, or try laying a drop cloth near the trim, but the drop cloth will always get in the way of your brush or roller and tend to come away from the wall just when you need it to protect everything.
Instead, use a piece of cardboard (or other thin, impermeable material, such as a plastic sheet). Insert the sheet into the gap between the wall or trim and the floor, paint that area with wild abandon, then slide the sheet forward and paint the next area. The sheet protects the floor, you get paint all the way to the edge, and you don’t spend the last hour gluing and endlessly adjusting tape.
Vaseline oil
When it comes to painting fixtures and hardware like doorknobs, it’s best to either remove them completely or cover them well with tape. But if you want to avoid this, or have small areas you don’t want to paint (like screws) where taping on a tiny square of masking tape is both annoying and ineffective, you have an alternative: use a little Vaseline . Apply a little paint to the area you don’t want to paint, and any paint that accidentally gets on it will just wipe off when it’s dry.
Drawing pens
Whether you’re touching up a missed spot or correcting a mistake, any place in your room that requires a very thin line of paint (like around a wall panel or light fixture that you can’t or simply don’t want to remove) can be incredibly difficult for even the smallest brush. This is where a drawing pen comes to the rescue. These reusable devices make it very easy to get into tight spaces and quickly touch up without having to tape the entire area and try to awkwardly tilt the brush. Check your work the next day and fill in any weak areas immediately, without additional preparation.
Gloves and socks
If you’ve ever painted staircase balusters or furniture legs, you know how difficult it can be to get everything covered well with a brush. So, ditch the brush: put on a nitrite glove, put an old sock on it, dip it in a can of paint, and just grab whatever you’re trying to paint with your hand . This method is much faster when drawing any unusually shaped element because your hand is much more flexible and dexterous than a brush or roller.
Radiator brushes and pads
Trying to paint something you don’t want to take off, like a radiator or toilet? You can get as close as possible and hope the empty space behind it won’t be noticeable, or you can buy a special tool like a radiator brush or paint pad that will allow you to paint the area behind those lights quickly and easily—no removal required.
Caulk
Getting crisp, clean lines with masking tape can sometimes seem like an impossible task. There is always some bleed-through element that needs to be cleaned up after the tape is peeled off. But you can avoid this and guarantee clear lines with the help of so-called Back Caulking :
-
Leave a small space between the edge of the tape and the wall – about a dime’s thickness.
-
Fill this space with a thin bead of caulk.
-
Smooth the bead with your finger and/or a damp rag as you would for any caulking job.
-
Let the paint dry and remove the masking tape.
Ta-da! Perfect lines.