ississauga wrote:
I recently started finishing basements and find painting the trim for
baseboard and doors is very labour intensive. Has someone invented a
machine for painting these things?, like you insert the trim and pull
it thru betwen two rollers and some paint gets into it via one of the
rollers...or something like that.

Since they are very narrow, only a few inches in width, I felt a
machine would be simple. If no machine exists have you made one
yourself?

In my opinion you cant do a quality job pre-staining or pre-painting
anything with regards to trim. It always results in a substandard end
result. We, and our painting subs, always painted after installation
because you need to run a _tiny_ bead of caulk between the trim and the
plaster (or other surface) and then tape, or hand cut, rolling your wall
color slightly onto the trim, and I mean SLIGHTLY.
The only labor saving step is, which ever you choose to paint first
(wall or trim) can get onto the other surface and you only tape once. We
would most always opt to paint trim first with the progression being:
install trim
prime walls and trim
caulk all trim/wall joints
paint trim (getting trim color on wall doesnt matter so can be sprayed
or brushed)
tape trim allowing wall paint to roll _ever so slightly_ onto trim
burnish tape
paint walls
remove tape

For stained trim it would be:
Install trim
stain trim (stain gets on wall)
urethane trim (urethane gets on wall)
caulk trim
tape
burnish
prime (but dont prime right to tape as you will see the edge of the
prime coat when you remove the tape)
paint
remove tape

Whenever you stain/urethane/paint your trim first it is inevetable that
you will be left with gaps somewhere between the wall and trim. This is
especially the case if you use tape&joint drywall but is an issue with
all situations.
In our opinion the end result is far superior to any other option and
take very little extra time.
For doors we spray everything except stain. Paint is sprayed with
airless and urethane with HVLP.

Mark