4 Ways to Speed Up Your Next Weekend Paint Project!

The thought of tackling a painting project doesn't always fill us with excitement.  In fact, a lot of us dread these "weekend-killers."  Many of us don't get all warm and fuzzy over the thought of spending tons of time painting.  At least I know I don't.  

Oh, the painting isn't really the problem--that part's relatively fun.  It's the washing of the walls, the patching of the nail holes, the taping.  It's the PREP WORK that I really hate.  And I hate it because it adds so much time to my project.

But there's a simple fix for this:  Do the Prep Work Early!

• PATCH THOSE NAIL HOLES:  If you're going to try to roll paint on your living room walls on a Saturday morning, then take 15 minutes on a Monday night and go around the room filling all the nail holes with a good spackling compound.  We recommend White Lightning Lightweight Spackle or Crawford's Spackling.  Go around the entire room and fill ALL the nailholes and then quit for the night.

• SAND THE SPACKLING:  The night after you spackled all your nail holes, take another 15 minutes and go around the room doing a quick sanding of those spots.  By this point, (if you've truly waited 24 hours) the spackling will be bone dry and will powder nicely as you sand it.  This stage of the project should only take you 15 quick minutes as you work your way around that room.

• WASH THE WALLS:  Every paint job should start with a good wall washing using TSP (TriSodium Phosphate).  However, washing the walls down on the day you want to paint can really slow you down--it'll take a good 30 minutes to an hour to wash the walls and then another 15 minutes or so for them to dry.  Avoid all of this by washing the walls down early. Just as we mentioned with the spackling and the sanding, take a night in the week BEFORE you plan to start painting and go around the room, washing the walls down.  Doing this will save you all that time on the day of your project.

• ROLL OUT THAT MASKING TAPE:  Finally, the night before you plan to do your work, apply your masking tape to all your trim and around your doors and ceilings, etc.  Of course, if you're going to do this, you'll want to use either 3M's Blue Painter's Masking Tape or 3M's Blue (Orange Core) Safe Release Painter's Tape.  Both of these tapes will still cleanly remove after being applied early!  

If you tackle these prep work steps early, you'll have more nights of work--but, each night will be relatively short AND, best of all, when the weekend arrives, all the boring work will be out of the way.  All you'll need to do is pop the top on your gallon of paint and start rolling your new color on your walls.

Accomplishing this work early is a great way to minimize the frustration of a paint project.  Give it a try--you'll like the results!

Don't Poison the Waterhole: How to Keep Spiderwebs and Dirt Out of Your Paint

Here's Hannah.  You'd let her drink out of the water pitcher
wouldn't you?

OK, the other day I experienced something I hope never, ever, ever to experience again.  NEVER. EVER.

Let me explain.  It all started innocently enough while I got the kids their dinner the other day.  My wife was gone and I was in charge.  I made them spaghetti-O’s and then put a pitcher of water on the table.

They ate their food, made a mess, and eventually, finished.  I came behind, mopped everything up and wiped the table down and, finally, once they were all taken care of, sat down with my own dinner. 

As I ate, the kids came by, one by one, and told me EVERY single thing that happened during their day.  It’s great to be loved--for a while--and then it’s just mind-numbing.  Story after story went through my ears and eventually, I found myself sitting at the table--my food gone--and Hannah my 3 year old--sitting on my lap--still talking. 

My brain was thoroughly exhausted at this point, but I do remember grabbing the pitcher of water that was still on the table from the kids’ dinner and pouring myself a glass.  As Hannah went on and on and on about this or that, I took little sips of water and tried to understand what she was telling me. 

At some point, in the midst of all of this, I noticed that something wasn’t quite right.   I wasn’t immediately aware of what it was, and I tried to ignore the feeling, but my brain wouldn’t let me.  I took another drink of water and it suddenly hit me:  I was chewing.  I was done eating--had been done for a while--there was no food left on my plate . . . but here I was . . . chewing.

Now, drinking water is not normally, a chewing experience.  But here I was, sitting at the table, drinking water and chewing it.  And the more I thought about it, and focused on it, the more I realized I wasn’t chewing water--I was actually chewing something that was in the water.

Well, naturally, I quickly grabbed my glass and held it up to take a look and when I did, I was shocked--horribly, horribly shocked.  Instead of the clear, crystally liquid I had hoped to see, it was grey.  And murky.  Things were floating in there:  something that looked like a part of a meatball and something else that I was pretty sure was a spaghetti-O.  And there were other, unidentifiable things as well.  It was a smorgasbord of gray food products.  All suspended in a liquid that seemed, suddenly, thicker and heavier than simple water.

I put the glass down, swallowed the meatball I was chewing and picked up the pitcher of water.  A quick look inside revealed more of the same:  floaty things bobbing up and down in some gray, opaque liquid. 

And then I looked at the outside of the pitcher.  I saw small orange, spaghetti-o sauce handprints  on the handle.  A closer examination revealed orange lip marks around the rim.

I looked at Hannah.  “Did you drink out of the pitcher?”

She nodded and then said, “only twice.”


Well, apparently two times was enough for Hannah to poison the waterhole so to speak.   I grabbed the pitcher off the table and brought it to the sink.  And, as I did so . . . inspiration dawned:  This was a perfect illustration of a common mistake people make when painting. 

See, how many times have you started a painting project with some brushwork?  You know, you start brushing around the edges--around your windows or your doors or something like that.  Inside outside, it typically doesn’t matter.  When you do that, what do you typically do?  

And Here's the Paint Point...

I’ll tell you what most people do:  most people grab the paint bucket--the gallon of their paint--and carry it with them.  They dip the brush into it, wipe the excess paint off the brush on the rim of the can, and then paint. When the brush is empty, they go back to the bucket or more paint.

That’s like Hannah drinking out of the water pitcher.  If she had gone to her glass of water for a drink, she’d only contaminate that cup.  Everybody else’s water would have been fine.  But she went to the source and contaminated that.  Once that was done, there was no way to get the spaghetti parts and meatball chunks out of it.  The only fix was to pour the water out, rinse the container and fill it up with new.

With water, that’s no big deal.  But if you’re doing that with paint, you can create quite an expensive and frustrating mess.  If you brush into a spiderweb or pick up some dirt (this happens especially often when people are working outside), and then dip back into your bucket, you’ve instantly contaminated all of your paint.  And you’ll find that out when you start rolling it onto bigger areas later.  You’ll be picking little chunks of this or that out of the finish and you’ll be very frustrated.  

And here's the Answer...

The solution?  Work out of a smaller container.  We’ve got some at RepcoLite that are perfect for this, or you can just use an old tupperware-like container.  Whatever you decide to use, remember:  whenever you do brush work, always work out of a smaller container--it will protect the bulk of your paint from contamination.

Looking at Your Back

OK, Moms and Dads, has this ever happened to you?  It’s happened to me a number of times, but the most recent took place a few Sunday’s ago.  We were getting all 5 kids ready for 8:30 church one Sunday morning.  And, of course, chaos ensued. However, eventually, because we’re such with-it parents, we managed to get everybody, including ourselves, ready.

Breathing a sigh of relief, we started to make our way to the car, but before I did that, my youngest child--Hannah--came trudging over to me and explained that she needed a hug.  Ahh, that’s so cute, isn’t it?  Little kids who still love their dad so much they need a hug?  So I scooped her up, and hugged her.  And she returned the hug--big time--grabbing me tightly and then patting me repeatedly on the back with the overwhelming love only a child can give.

Well, when the hug was over, I ushered her out to the car and decided to give myself a quick once-over in the mirror--just to make sure I looked ok after the hectic morning.  Well, after a glance, I realized I was as good as I was ever going to look and so I jumped into the van and drove to church.

When we got there, we talked to some people, found our seats--this time in the front row of the balcony rather than our normal seats in the back--listened to the service, talked to some people on the way out and eventually came home.  However, changing out of my Sunday clothes and back into a t-shirt and jeans, I made a shocking discovery.  The back of my shirt was completely covered with gooey, dirty, cheeto’s-ee orange hand prints.  The front of the shirt was fine, but the back was filthy.

It only took me a second to put it together.  Hannah had hugged me before we left and rather than patting me on the back out of sheer love--she was just using the back of my shirt as a wash rag.  She cleaned her hands on my good Sunday shirt.  And then I went to church and walked all around, sat in the front row, talked to all kinds of people--lived it up and had a big time--all the while with my back covered over with slime and assorted gunk.

That’s happened to my wife and I many different times.  Sometimes it involves food, sometimes it’s from other things.  But the point is this:  we never catch it because we never think to check out our backs in the mirror.  And that brings me to the paint point that’s hidden away in all of this-- see, I never thought to look at my back in a mirror before I went to church--it never crossed my mind.  I looked at myself in a mirror--at the front--to make sure I looked alright, but I never gave the back a second look.  A lot of us do this same thing with our homes.  Hang with me, here--this is profound--but you’ve got to hang in there.

See, we do this in our homes in this regard:  We take good care of our front doors--our main entrances. These are the doors people typically see when they drive up or drive by our homes--so we take care (at least most of the time) and make these entrances visually pleasing. We use flowers, a great door color, little welcome mats . . . all kinds of little things to make the entranceway appealing.

So, we pay a lot of attention to the front--the main entrance.  But you know what most of us completely forget?  The garage.

Now, this seems like a leap in logic, but it’s not.  See, the garage may be, in reality, the TRUE main entrance to our home.  According to a recent US survey, "71% of American homeowners with a garage use the garage to enter their homes." Another survey stated that "45% of homeowners with garages use their garages as the main entrance to their homes."

What the numbers are saying is this:  71% of Americans who own garages use the garage to enter their own homes.  45% of Americans who own garages encourage all visitors to enter their homes through the garage.
And yet, even though the garage is used repeatedly as an entrance to our homes, it's often the last place we really think to do any "decorating".  We put all our thought and effort into the front doors (and maybe even the garage door), but we don't give a second though to the garage itself.  It never crosses our minds.

It’s just like my shirt scenario at church--the front was pristine, but anybody watching me walk away realized I was like pig pen of Charlie Brown fame.  I was a filthy mess.

So all that to ask a simple question:  if folks enter your home through your garage, what kind of impression do they get?  Is it a welcoming area?

And even if you’re garage is never used by guests, chances are your family enters the home--at least at times--through the garage.  Shouldn’t you have a nice, respectable entrance into your home?

The answer, of course, since I’m selling paint, is YES--you should have a nice entrance in your garage.  And the good news is, this doesn’t need to be an insanely expensive, complicated project.

THE BASIC STEPS

• WASH THE WALLS.  If your walls are painted, go ahead and wash them with TSP (Trisodium Phosphate).  This is a great "pre-painting" cleaner that cuts through dirt and grease and rinses clean away.  If the walls are not painted, you might want to choose to use a shop vac and remove as much dust and dirt as you can.

• FILL THE GOUGES.  After cleaning, go around the room with a good spackling compound.  We recommend Crawford's Spackling Paste.  It's a high quality spackle that's easy to work with. 

• DEGREASE the TROUBLE SPOTS.  Most garages are going to have a couple areas where greasy handprints or smudges stain the walls.  Before you paint, make sure you hit these spots with a specific degreaser.  There are any number of these specialty products at RepcoLite--just stop in and we'll direct you to the one that will work best.

• SPOT PRIME.  If you have greasy smudges on your wall that you have to deal with (as in the above step), it wouldn't hurt to spot prime those areas with BIN stain-blocking primer or RepcoLite's own Zip Prime.

• APPLY YOUR FINISH.  Once you've done all the prep work, it's time to roll on your finish.  We recommend a high quality acrylic latex.  It doesn't need to be an exterior product as most garage walls aren't exposed to the elements.  However, you would likely want to consider an Eggshell finish at the dullest and possibly even a Satin Sheen or a Semi-Gloss.  The finishes with higher glosses will hold up longer and resist dirt and grime better than a flatter finish.

And there you go!  It sounds like a lot of work (I know), but it's not as complicated as it seems.  Typically, you'll find that the whole project will take only a single weekend.