tips and tricks Archives - Page 20 of 30

When I painted my kids’ shotgun bathroom, I used one of my favorite paint tools – a PaintStick. Using a tube inserted into your bucket of paint, you suck paint into the handle of the stick and then push the paint through the roller. By not needing to use messy paint trays or having to climb up and down a ladder to constantly load a roller with paint, it makes painting a breeze.

Well, it’s a breeze until you need to paint a small space. In the kids’ bathroom, the end of the PaintStick hit the wall behind me while I was trying to paint the wall in front of me. It was really irritating, and I ended up doing some sort of PaintStick yoga to be able to paint the bathroom. It was far less irritating than using a paint tray, but irritating nonetheless. I never wanted to have to invent my own PaintStick yoga poses!

Then, HomeRight (the company who makes the PaintStick) sent me a PaintStick Mini – a new product that they had just developed. Y’all, it’s the same thing as a regular PaintStick, but just in a Mini Me version. Why couldn’t this have been on the market when I was doing my PaintStick yoga in the bathroom?!?

Compared to the PaintStick, the PaintStick Mini worked just as easily. Its pole is shorter and its roller head is smaller, so that makes it easier to get into tight spaces and corners. You do have to reload it more often than the original PaintStick, but that’s the price you pay for a shorter extension pole.

I’m working on my big 2013 project (hey, I still have a month and a half until 2014), so I decided to give my PaintStick Mini a whirl in a small enclave I have by my staircase. In all honestly, I was waiting for a pork roast to be finished in the oven and decided that this wall couldn’t go on being beige for one second longer. Am I the only one to decide things like that?

So, in 30 minutes I was able to cut in with a paint brush and roll this section (and a little more not pictured). The next day, I applied the second coat in the same time frame. In an hour total, I transformed this space from a blah blah beige enclave to something that feels exciting and new to me – and so much more modern than the builder’s beige.

Now I have two favorite paint tools in my holster – the PaintStick and the PaintStick Mini.

Disclosure: I have been compensated for this post by Homeright. All opinions – and PaintStick yoga poses – are my own.

Several months ago, I was minding my own business in the painting section at Lowe’s when I almost ran into something in the middle of the aisle. It was one of those cardboard displays that they have every so often featuring an item that they were promoting. I generally ignore those displays since I know what I’m looking for when I go in there, but this one stopped me because it was bright orange.

And because it was for a new type of painters tape kit from FrogTape…made specifically for textured surfaces.

Cue the heavens opening and the angels singing.

As someone who is obsessed with sharp, graphic patterns on my walls, having an entire house of knock down textured walls is the bane of my existence. I think knock down texture is largely a regional thing, so many of you probably don’t experience this. But, painters tape doesn’t properly seal on textured walls due to the raised texture, so the paint bleeds under the tape. In fact, I’ve had to develop my own time consuming system for working with regular painters tape on textured walls. And in all honesty, I don’t normally use FrogTape – neither the green nor the yellow versions. I have always thought that the 3M blue tape worked well (and am actually in love with this Bloc-it tape* that you can only get off of Amazon).

But, they had me at “textured surface, ” so I immediately bought one of the new orange kits. At $14 it wasn’t something cheap to try on a whim, but if it saved me hours of my time the next time I needed to stripe a wall, it was well worth it.

Fast forward to this weekend when I was striping a wall for a friend. She has textured walls, too, and I gave this new paint kit a shot.

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How to Paint a Wall in a Tight Space

My New Favorite Thing: FrogTape for Textured Surfaces