how to avoid paint splatter

sometimes you just want to paint your house to make it look decent enough to get it rented out or you just want to paint your room to make it look nice and you don't want to go through the time and hassle of covering the floor with drop cloth or newspapers or line the edges with painter's tape. i will show you tips on how to do a quick but non professional paint job using a water based paint without the need for drop cloths and painter's tape.

1) make sure the roller is COMPLETELY DRY (from water). a roller that is wet with water will cause a lot of mess and splatter no matter what you do. not just an ordinary splatter, but the very lethal kind. the one that dries up immediately on contact and will be very hard to take off - you will need a scrub or a scraper. it dries up immediately because it's diluted with water and water dries up much quicker than paint. the splatter will be well spread out such that it will take you forever to remove it.

the problem is you will need to wash the roller with water if you want to use it again the next day, or else if the paint dries up the roller will be unusable. and it takes many days to dry after washing with water or a whole day under the sun or in front of an electric fan, so you can't use it immediately the next morning. the solution to this problem is to keep the roller submerged in paint inside the covered paint container. but if your paint container is not large enough for your roller to fit, then just coat it with a thick layer of paint and seal it inside a plastic bag to prevent the paint from drying up overnight.

2) lightly touch the bottom of the roller with paint, drip once, and roll thrice

now your roller has lots of juice, but it won't drip.

3) on the first pass, lightly glide the roller from top to bottom, making sure not to exert any pressure, meaning don't push the roller against the wall just let it glide so that paint will be distributed evenly and there will be no splatter. then on the 2nd and 3rd pass, push a little bit or exert a little force.

notice how that just took around 30 seconds per strip, so you could easily finish a small room in 2 hours.

4) if you don't feel there is a need to do perfect lines using painter's tape, i came up with a technique. first, position the brush at a 45 degree angle, push, then vibrate your arm. i'm using a dry brush just to demo, but that near perfect edging was created using this technique.

5) have a wet cloth ready to remove splatter. mistakes are unavoidable and there will be occasional albeit very rare splatter which will take about 2 seconds to remove using a wet cloth. example one time when i turned around i hit my arm on the cabinet door and it caused the paint on the roller to splatter.

6) paint naked. the first video i made i was totally naked but youtube didn't let me upload it so i created another video where i'm wearing boxer shorts. the reason for being naked is once paint gets on your clothes, it will never come off. or you could wear clothes you are about to throw away.

7) if you really want to cover the floor and you are in the philippines, go to the fruit section of your city's main market. they usually sell old newspapers for P40 a kilo, which is more than enough to cover the entire floor of a very large room.

8) when everything is done, the best place to wash your paint brush and roller is in the kitchen sink.

9) estimate cost: i painted my parent's 136 sqm condo in 2 days - 3 bedrooms, 1 kitchen, but excluding the ceilings and excluding the 2 bathrooms. i used 10 liters of paint because it's just single coating. i spent around P1,500 on the paint and around P500 on the brushes and rollers so around $40 total. the contractor charged P80k or $2k and the rent is only P30k a month so i felt sorry for my parents losing around 3 months worth of income so i decided to help them out. and that's why i made this video so my brothers can carry on the family tradition when the lease expires 4 years from now and i happen to be travelling in china renting a girlfriend (omg did you see this youtube video? - We Rented A Girlfriend In China | ASIAN BOSS).

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