A great painting tip

You can find helpful painting tips by the score at sites like Taunton Press’s Fine Homebuilding or Home & Garden’s HGTV, but there was one important, but elusive tip I couldn’t find anywhere: how to keep paint roller fuzz out of the paint, and therefore off the wall. I’ve resorted to vacuuming roller covers before using them, and that helped, but didn’t completely solve the problem.

Today I thought I’d wash the roller covers (just with water) first to see if that would do the trick. I had to go to the store to buy some stuff, including roller covers. As I was leaving the store, I noticed tents set up in the parking lot, with various types of products on display. Went over to see what was up (and scored a free pack of yard waste bags), and had a look at the paint products display (brushes, rollers, kits, etc.). Matt Knight of Behr was demonstrating their new, top-of-the-line paint. It’s an impressive new technology similar to Benjamin Moore’s Aura line, both of which use pigments more finely ground than was previously possible, which enables the painter to apply fewer coats of paint and get better coverage. I could have used that 18 months ago when I painted a beautiful deep red below the chair rail in our dining room. It required one coat of tinted primer and six coats of red paint. The finished product is stunning, especially when morning or afternoon light hits it, but it was a lot of work. Matt Knight pointed out that Behr’s new line has primer built into the paint, so using a separate primer is no longer necessary. And I could have achieved the same coverage with two coats, rather than seven. Good stuff.

After the demonstration, I asked Matt how to keep the roller fibers out of the paint, and told him what I had been doing, and that I thought I might wash the rollers before use. He suggested I lightly dampen the rollers (not soak, but spritz them), then wrap painter’s tape around the roller, leaving it on for 15–20 seconds. “You won’t believe how much fuzz will be on that tape when you take it off,” he said. It works! I pulled a ton of fiber off, then for good measure, did it again, and pulled off a bit more. While I did have to retrieve a few (literally about three or four) fibers from the paint, that beats the huge amounts I've had to remove in the past.

More tips Matt shared:
1. Use better roller covers, the ones with a plastic core, not the cardboard-cored ones. The plastic-cored covers hold onto the fibers better.

2. If you’re going to use the roller cover again tomorrow, put it in a plastic bag in the fridge. This will slow down the drying process and keep the cover moist. (also found on Fine Homebuilding’s site)

3. Wait at least 16 hours before putting on the next coat. If you’re waiting only a few hours, you’re just rewetting the previous coat and pushing it around. If you’ve ever tried this, you know you’ll get pieces of paint film breaking off and making a mess of your paint job. Personally, I wait 24 hours between coats, just to be sure, and if it is very humid or rainy, up to 48 hours.

You’ll find a lot more great interior and exterior painting tips at the sites mentioned above.

I hope this proves helpful to you.