Planning to do a bang up DIY paint job on your home? If this is your first time to paint anything larger than, say, a bird cage or a dog house, here are some common exterior painting mistakes from the HuffingtonPost to let you know in advance what you must try to avoid at all costs:
1. Scrubbing your brushes at the end of a long day. Project still ongoing? Then don’t scrub your brushes just yet. Instead, wrap the brush with plastic and secure it with a rubber band. This will keep the bristles moist and ready for when you come back the next day.
2. Dipping too low into the can. You’re wasting paint when you do that. Try to dip only up to one third of the can. That should be sufficient enough.
3. Painting over oil-based paint with latex paint. One major exterior painting mistake you could make is to try and paint over oil-based paint with latex. They’re both types of paint after all. There shouldn’t be any problems if you use one on the other, right? You couldn’t be more wrong. If you do this, you’ll end up having to redo that wall anyway, especially when the peeling or paint cracking starts. And it will, it will.
4. Rushing through the prepwork. Painting over that oil-based paint is one typical example of rushing through the prepwork. What you should do instead is to sand down the walls until there aren’t any traces of paint left. After that, you can easily start painting. That’s because paint always lasts longer on a clean surface. So whenever you’re tempted to just paint over those walls, just remind yourself of the inconvenience of having to redo any of the work because you didn’t get it right the first time. That should be enough incentive for you to do the prepwork properly.
5. Using cheap brushes. Or worse, thinking one brush fits all. If you’re serious about the project, then invest money in good quality brushes. Also, find out which brushes work best with the type of wall you’re working with and with the scale of the project you had in mind.
There are plenty more mistakes out there that you should brush up on. If you think doing the exterior painting for your home might be too much after all, though, no worries. You can always call on professional painting companies in Clarksville TN, like Martin’s Quality Painting, to help you out.
