pick up, release, and no dragging

Painting, what's the big deal, right? I mean you grab a brush, dip some paint on her, and slather away. You pop on a roller, dip some paint on her, and slather away. Well friends, as it turns out, not really.

I mean, you can. Lots of people do. HGTV seems to make it look that way too. And the results? Not so hot: roller marks, orange peel, under coat show-thru, dips, wavy cut-ins. It seems everyone is a painter. But a good painter? What's it take to be a good painter?

A recent job I completed had a fairly substantial amount of painting required. The client almost shot me when I presented the professional painter quotation for the work. To ease their concerns, I painted and charged them on a time and materials basis. Guess what? To get the same results as the pro, this guy (the one on the computer right now) had to spend twice as much time and in the end saved the client a paltry 10% over the quoted pricing. But, this guy also learned a great deal about painting that he didn't know previously.

Brushes. There are two types of brushes: good ones and crappy ones. Most home owner brushes are crappy. They pickup too little paint, release what paint they picked up poorly, and drag that paint across the medium like a garden rake in soft soil. ick poo. The good brushes make your effort much much lower and great results are easier to achieve. The brush rests in your hand naturally, the bristles trace the inteded path crisply, and the clean up is easy.

Damn. Did I just draft a Purdy brush commercial?

Rollers. There are two types of...oh, you have heard that recently. Let me add one special lovely item about rollers. The crappy ones? They like to shed filament fibers every once in a while throughout the painting day eventhough you may have used the super secret tape-around-the-roller-beforehand-to-get-loose-fibers-off trick. These emancipated fibers you may discover, like this guy, in the primer coat. These curly filaments will stick up like single strands of back hair: not really hairy but obviously not...right. Unlike back hair, though, you can take some sandpaper and gently remove these scoundrels, though the last thing a construction person, this guy, wants to do when primed to paint (ha!) is sand everything down. duuuude.

So, in review, don't buy crappy brushes and rollers. Pay more for great ones. And like all your tools, take good care of them and they will reward you with great results.

Next week, I'll break down the proper way to sharpen your carpenter's pencil! right.

Cheers.