Painting can be enjoyable if you know the tools of the trade properly. Hereby, you are going to know about the essential tools that are required to make your home or work-office tone in with different colors. You can yourself enjoy the painting after going through these texts. So, let’s get excited to make the appearance of your vicinity awesome.
LADDER
Foremost tool that is required for painting is ladder. Although you can use different substitute for ladder, but if you have perfect ladder, it will makes your job 90 percent easier. So, it is worthy to buy a proper ladder to get away with unnecessary toil. Now, there are number of ladder types available in market.
You can easily access them online according to your requirement. But it is a great question for one to select a proper painting ladder. Different ladders are designed to meet the demands of the customers that make the painting not only safe and sound but a fun too. You must select them according to the different characteristics such as lightness, portability, strength, and maneuverability. These characteristics can be checked by looking over the style, size, material and grade of particular ladder.
A right step ladder, stepstool, or multi-purpose step ladder makes your painting a fun. You can also use scaffolding to reach at each nook and corner of a wall and reach new heights. A stepstool, stepladder, multipurpose ladder are suggested for indoor painting while you may require a tall step ladder or extended ladder for outdoor job. Thus, you need to look at the size or length of the ladder so that ladder is neither too short nor too long for the job at hand.
Next aspect which is important to be considered while making your final selection is duty rating of ladder. They are duty rated duly so as to categorize them according to their typical usage. They can be used for special duty, heavy duty, extra heavy duty, medium duty or for light duty applications.
You will find that ladders are made of different materials such as fiber, aluminum and wood. Fiber is electrically resistive and strong enough to bear heavy load and thus a first choice for professionals too. Aluminum is also strong enough, resistive to corrosion and light in weight and thus a good choice too. Wood is although heavy in weight yet it is less costly and electrically resistive in dry condition.
Read more: Best Ladder For Painting
Drop Clothes
If you are prepared at the start to handle all the mess, you can complete the task easily and efficiently. Thus, you needn’t to work hard to clean if you have drop clothes at the right time. You can use them to shield floors and furniture from paints’ spots. They are available in multiple sizes and made of different materials for both indoor and outdoor purpose.
They are available in basically four varieties which are canvas, paper, plastic and poly blend. Canvas drop clothes are thick and durable one and thus can easily absorb the heavy paints’ drips. They are quiet rugged, not torn easily due to its tight weaving and thus last for number of years. Canvass drop clothes are rather costly and heavier as compared to other options available for drop clothes. You need to have extra space to store such drop clothes.
Plastic drop clothes are available with different size and thicknesses. They are attractive options as they are less costly and light in weight for painting. Depressing side of the plastic drop clothes is just that they are nonabsorbent to paints and thus can cause spills over the floors.
Paper drop clothes are less pricey and disposable. They soak up the paint and provide a shield for area underneath. Moreover, paint spill less in case of paper as compared to plastic drop cloth. Yet, the negative aspect is that they can rip or torn easily while work.
Poly drop clothes have advantage of both the worlds as compared to plastic and paper options. They are economical and disposable. This type of drop cloth absorbs the paint and can be easily fitted to any job piece. You just need to tape them to make it stable in airy conditions. Negative aspect is same as paper drop cloth that can be easily cracked and you need to tape the edges for painting.
Painters Tape
Painter tapes also known as adhesive tape or sticky tapes or masking tapes which one can use them for crisp and clear painting.
Points for the selection of painter tapes:
- Tape should quickly stick to the plane or the wall that you are painting. Tapes that adhere to the multiple surfaces are available in the market like on the wood walls, glass, plastic and metals. You can match the best possible option according to your need.
- You can use the tapes which are UV-rays protected that can be used in the direct or indirect sunlight.
- Choose the tape that can be used properly inside as well as outside the house because using the interior tape outside may have bad or disastrous effects.
You should clean the walls properly before applying masking tapes because if the walls are dusty the stickiest possible tape will not work. And you should use detergent to clean the walls if they are oily to get the best possible result. TSP-PF phosphate free detergent is available in the paint stores and they are best for cleaning the greasy surface and clean the walls and let them properly dry before using the painters tape.
Surface-Prep Tools:
These tools are crucial in the painting procedure. You should have the best possible tools available to get the best result.
Most of surface-prep tools include the dust cleaner as it is most important to get the best result. Surface-prep tools for concrete walls are scabblers, scalers, scrapers and scarifires.
Surface-prep tools for metal areas like ship decks, maintenance of pipes, storage tanks, floors in factories, bridge constructions. It includes scarifiers, scalers , needle scallers, hammers for scaling, and deck planners for removing the alkyds, Sealants, paints, and rust.
Now, let’s have a glance over the tools and their uses. Needle scalers are used to get the better texturing, cleaning the seams, and to remove the coating on concrete.
Scarifiers are used to remove the rust, adhesive, paints, from the concrete and steel. Scabblers are used to roughen and reduce the level of concrete and finish the surface and make ready for painting. You can get rid of the ice and adhesive, residue from the floors with the help of scabblers without any hardship.
Caulk Gun:
When all the patching and tape removing work is done one should start doing caulking. We should use caulking material where the two edges meet like the point where window molds meet the wall or we can say caulking should be placed wherever to types to material meets. Caulking prevents the wood work from moisture. It makes the work looks more furnished and professional.
We should use the same type of caulk for interior work and the exterior work that looks more professional. A good quality caulk is best choice.
Few caulking tubes comes with the seal that needs to be punctured and one should make a small hole at the tip because if hole is large then caulking process will become tedious and will create a lot mess.
First and the foremost thing that everyone should take care off while caulking is one should not fill the cracked area only. Caulk the entire area. Start it from the tip put the caulking gun on the base very gently give even pressure on tube and fill the entire area. Remove the extra caulk from edges with finger tips and put the caulk in to the cracks. One shouldn’t use the caulking between wood and glass.
Buckets and Cans:
Are you looking for a container which can occupy the sufficient paint so that you have not to fill the container again and again? On the other hand, it becomes cumbersome to handle a heavy container. You can save lot of time if you have right container. Moreover, you can use them for cleaning paint brush too and many other options. But, it is essential to choose a bucket according to the painting job at hand.
Mostly, you can access a plastic bucket at any online store which can handle gallons of paint easily and have classification according to its duty from light to heavy duty options. You have the option to purchase from transparent to translucent to opaque container with different color options in online stores.
Also, you can have several sizes and styles made of paper, plastic, metal. Paper buckets are disposable and available with different sizes at very cheap price mostly. Plastic and metallic bucket are more durable and there is no even risk of splitting of the paint during the painting. You can also use paper or plastic liner to keep your container clean so as to use again and again. Zinc coated metallic containers can also be used for long duration without any worry.
Paint brushes
You can have long lasting and consistent finishing if you have high quality brush at hand. It will also speed up and makes your task much easier. Generally, either paint brushes are made of ordinary hair bristles or they are made of synthetic substance such as polyster or nylon. Brushes with ordinary bristles are best suited for enamel and topcoat while synthetic bristles are used specially for latex coating.
Choose your brush according to the painting job requirement. Small brush for large work makes you sick to complete the task while large brush for small work can make the painting cluttered and terrible.
Fine Bristles have split ends and definite flex at the tip ends. It should be small at the external part and big in size at the center so as to handle it properly.
You can tug on bristles to check its quality. If bristles comes out easily, that means it is not in proper condition to work and brush is at its last stage of life. Hereby, you can get some good options for selection of particular job according to the painting task. Decide the brush dimensions according to the job requirement are always preferable.
| Painting Task | Brush Dimension |
|---|---|
| Interior walls and ceilings | 3 to 4 inches |
| Huge Exterior walls | 4 inch flat brush with thickness up to 1 inch |
| Corners of walls | 2 inch brush with pointed edges |
| Woodworks | 1 inch to 2.5 inches wide brush |
| Window | Angled brushes between 1 and 2.5 inch width. |
Paint Rollers
Paint roller has two parts. One is roller frame and another is roller cover. Roller cover absorbs the paint and transfers it to surface. Roller frame is cylindrical tube which is attached within the roller cover so as to slide the cover over the surface easily.
Paint Rollers can complete the task speedily especially for large flat surfaces. They are difficult to work within narrow cracked walls areas. So, you may require paint brush too for completing of task.
9 inch roller is appropriate for interior walls and ceiling. You can use mini roller of 3 inch width for painting of narrow areas and areas consisting of gaps or crevices.
Important factor for selection of paint roller is its span of nap. Short nap rollers are suitable for smooth surfaces as it generates less foam while long nap rollers are used for rough and hard surfaces.
Roller Screen and Tray:
Roller screens are the metallic grid structure device used to make the roller cover absorbs the paint evenly after dipping the roller within the bucket. You just need to rake the roller to the screen two or three times. You can get these screens generally in different sizes such as 4 inch, 6 inch and 9 inch.
You can easily obtain plastic or metallic framed tray for the painting roller so as to secure them for the long lasting time. You can use a good trays again and again and thus marked as for heavy duty. These trays are solvent resistant and thus it is always safe to use them with any stains and paints. Trays are available in different sizes from 4 inches to 21 inches.
Some trays have multiple packing so as to provide tough protection to roller. It is also not costly to clean such trays. You can clear any stain with the oil or warm water. But some have liner i.e. a plastic bag inside to hold the paint and keep the tray tidy and thus save you from any turmoil.
Paint sprayer
There are various paint sprayers available with different technique to swiftly coat the paint over the walls. You can use air sprayers, airless sprayer, cup sprayers, HVLP sprayers etc. One should pay attention to paint sprayers’ characteristics such as speed, volume of basin, size, ease of usage, portability, nozzle size, and its accessories for the correct selection of paint sprayer.
Air sprayers are not suitable for big projects as these sprayers waste a huge amount of spray at workstation. An airless paint sprayer is driven by external force and has no such serious issue of overspray as of air sprayer. High volume and low pressure (HVLP) is another technology for paint sprayer that is great option for small to medium painting task. Cup air sprayers are used for painting multiple colors for the different furniture of your home or office. You have the choice for change of fan speed, paint stream and air flow so as to work according to the requirement of the job.
