James "Cubby" Culbertson wrote:
Hiya Folks,
I'm in the process of painting the interior of the house and am about 1/3 of
the way done. I keep running into two
problems that are taking a vast amount of time to correct and I'm hoping the
wisdom of the group might have some
advice to avoid the problems.

1. Where two colors meet on say a corner or wall, I'm taping off the one
color and then painting up to the tape. No
matter how hard I apply the tape, it seems the new color seeps under the
tape and I end up having to take a very small
artist brush and painting the entire line again. I'm using the 3M Blue
painters tape if that means anything. I realize the texture
of the wall is probably causing most of my problems but was hoping someone
might have an idea how to get the tape
to fill all the recesses (the texture really isn't that "deep" if you will).

2. Related to the above problem, I have saltillo tile on the floor and
paint has gotten under the tape there too and has
ended up on the grout. Any suggestions on how to clean this up?

Thanks much,
Cheers,
cc


I'll disagree on the "tape is a waste of time". Try this:

- Paint one wall color. Call this "A".
- Let this dry.
- Place tape on the color you just painted. ("A")
- Here is the trick - Paint the edge of the tape with color "A".
Color "A" will seep under the edge of the tape onto the wall that you
painted "A". It also SEALS the edge of the tape.
- Let this dry.
- NOW paint color "B".
- Remove the tape.

You are left with a razor sharp line. You still have to reasonably
apply the tape, but this really works well. With all due respect to the
steady hand crowd, you can not get this result with a brush.

The downside is that it is a lot of work, and depending on the results
you want, a good brush and a steady hand can do quite a good job.