If you’ve been following me for any length of time you will already know that I do a ton of painting! I can’t say I love to paint, but I am a bit of BEFORE and AFTER addict and paint is often my weapon of choice when transforming an object or space. The actual transformation coat is quite fun to apply because it is when you really see your vision come to life, but the steps leading up to painting (patching, sanding, priming) and the clean-up that follows are tedious and void of any real emotional pay off. Prep and clean-up are just necessary jobs that need to get done as part of the process. Over the years, I have tried different paint tray liners (including plastic bags) to help save on the clean-up at the end of a project. Store bought liners work well if they fit properly into your tray, if they are not designed specifically for your tray, they are more of a pain than anything else. My friend uses plastic bags by slipping the entire tray into the bag and tying the ends to secure it. I find that bags slip around and they just don’t work for me.
This summer I finally came up with a DIY paint tray liner that works great! The answer: GLAD Press’n Seal. Depending on the size of your tray, you may need two pieces to cover the bottom and up the sides of your tray. I simply overlap the seam in the middle by a couple of inches to stop leaking. The sticky surface on the bottom of the Press’n Seal adheres to the surface of the paint tray to prevent slippage and works like a dream. I actually made a simple video (my first ever) to show you how great it works. You will see a bit of seepage in the bottom, but this was caused during clean-up when I was trying to scrape some of the excess paint out of the roller with the edge of the paint stick. It slipped and the seam split slightly (you can see the spot at the beginning of the video). Had I not done that there would have been zero seepage. As it was, I simply wiped the spot with a paper towel and it came right off. Now you must keep in mind that my tray is not completely spotless as this is the same tray I have been using for about 25 years of painting!
Voila! So simple and what a time saver! Try it out next time you paint and let me know how it works for you.
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We’ve had this little wooden antique table for many years. I’m not sure why, but it is one of the few that I have never taken the time to refinish. We keep it in our bedroom and I love both the size and shape of it. The old stain was super dark and didn’t reveal even the slightest hint of the wood beneath. In all honesty, my first choice would have been to paint it out white just because that’s what I do. Tim really likes “wood” and the grain to be revealed, so my thought was to do a quick refinish and prove it was nothing spectacular and then have my way and paint it white. I must say, we were both quite surprised when the stripping was done and the beautiful oak wood grain was exposed. Although I still prefer the “painted out” look of white, we do have dark brown in our room, so I opted to stain it and make my hubby happy! I can’t believe the difference in the BEFORE and AFTERs.
When stripping, I find the Crica 1850 products work great. They are strong and fast acting products that require proper gloves and protection. Although effective, be careful when using these products. I’m not quite sure what type of wood my coat rack is, but the grain is not very visible and it seems to have a natural redish hue ~ maybe fir? I chose a deep brown stain that helped to tame the red and a satin finish, as opposed to the old high gloss. I love how it has more of a matt look.
both edges of all the paint strips. This may seem a bit overwhelming, but believe me it is the key to achieving the best results possible. The truth of the matter is PAINT BLEEDS UNDER TAPE, so you want to control this by making sure that the paint that bleeds is the same colour as your base wall (white bleeds on white). There is nothing as disappointing as removing the tape and finding that the colours you’ve used have leaked over top of one another. I have to confess the white boarders made this job pretty easy because all of my sealing was done in white. If you have different colours up against one another, you need to make sure that the colour you are sealing with is the same as the colour it will bleed onto. For example if I didn’t have white boarders, I may have grey bleeding onto black and visa versa. I would need to use the appropriate colour to seal each and every strip/edge of tape. This is much more work.
