Tips and Tricks when Painting
Experience creates the opportunity for expertise. My experiences with renovating or building homes have made me an expert when it comes to tips and tricks when painting. I want to share what I have learned with you.
Tip #1: Buy quality paint
Quality paint not only means quality of the actual product but also the customer service. For our current home, we have used Benjamin Moore paint. This choice means we must go to the specific Benjamin Moore store in our area. I’m not upset about this considering the customer service we have received during our home renovation. Buying paint from a box store means you are at the mercy of whichever employee may or may not be working in the paint section at that particular time. In my experience, the employees at our local Benjamin Moore store have gone above and beyond to be helpful.
For the majority of our home we selected White Dove for our interior walls and Simply White for our trim. For accent rooms such as the laundry room, we selected Blue Heather. All of our paint colors for our current home are from Benjamin Moore. You can read more about our master bathroom here.
Tip #2: Buy the right type of paint
When painting ceilings, use a flat paint. For walls use eggshell and for windows, interior doors, and trim use semi-gloss. The types of paint determine the shine and level of difficulty when it comes to clean up. Flat paint is the most difficult to get dirt off of; however, you typically do not need to worry about getting your ceilings dirty. Also, you really do not want your ceiling to shine. For walls, eggshell gives a nice durability and a little shine but very minimal. The window trim, baseboards, crown molding, and interior doors should be in a semi-gloss finish. This finish is a high shine and helps with easy clean up of spills or fingerprints.
Tip #3: Buy quality brushes
I will go even farther and say, “buy Purdy paint brushes”. A good quality paint brush such as Purdy will last longer and give a better paint finish. When you factor in longer usage of your brushes then you really are not spending a fortune. They will outlast the cheaper competition. I like to use a slanted, small width Purdy brush for all my cutting in and trim work.
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Trick #1: Use Shur-Line edgers
For our stairwell, where the borders of our walls met the ceiling, it was a challenge to paint clean lines in those high places. A trick I use is utilizing the Shur-Line edger to get a clean cut by placing the edger on the end of an extendable paint pole.
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Trick #2: Use aluminum foil and a refrigerator
You may think, what does aluminum foil and a refrigerator have to do with painting? If you will be painting for multiple days and do not want to wash your brush out each time, you may wrap your brush in aluminum foil or a ziplock bag and place it in your refrigerator. This trick will keep your brush from drying out. The important information to remember is to wash your brush out as soon as you are finished painting!
My hope is that you have learned something that you may put to use the next time you are painting in your home!
