Home Improvement: Painting Tips

If you have not done much painting before, even a simple painting task can require an inordinate amount of time to complete, or it least it may seem like you’ve been painting your entire life. There are a few professional tricks for the most time consuming painting task, ‘cutting in’.

If you master these techniques you will find painting is not such a difficult task after all. With a well-done paint job, your painting project will look great too.

People who are inexperienced at painting think that painting is an easy job. They think you just use a brush or roller to spread a little paint around and you are done. That idea doesn’t bear much resemblance to reality though. There are many little difficulties that you won’t understand until you’ve actually tried to solve them. For instance, walls and ceilings are almost never painted the same color, so eventually you will need to paint the top of the wall without smearing paint onto the ceiling. This technique is known as ‘cutting in’ and it is easily the most tedious and time-consuming part of painting. Here are some ‘cutting in’ tips to make your painting project easier.

Even the expert painters recognize that they need to put up a masking product in some areas to keep from getting paint on a surface where it is not wanted. For instance, you should mask off the ceiling to prevent smears of wall paint. New products in the marketplace combine easy removal tape and plastic or paper sheets to cover large areas which need to be masked quickly. The masking products are easy to apply and speed up the project quickly.

Even if you use a masking product, it’s wise to learn how to use the paintbrush in the correct manner. ‘Cut in’ by using the brush tip instead of the sides. This technique is especially effective at the ceiling line and around the baseboards. You can save much preparation time by learning to ‘cut-in’ rather than taking the time to mask off the area.

‘Cutting in’ is an essential part of a professional appearing painting job. Smooth breaks between colors with clear cut lines just plain look better. If you learn to ‘cut-in’ property, you can finish the painting job in short order and go on to another project and yet you will still have a project that looks like it was done by a professional painter.