7 Tips To Avoid A Mess While Exterior Painting in St. Louis, MO

The idea of painting the exterior of your home can be daunting in itself, but when you think about how messy the whole process can be, it can be enough to put a person off ever wanting to do it.

However, you might want to take to heart that there are certain things you can do that can lessen the mess that you make and in some cases eliminate it entirely — if you are careful about how you do it.

Let us look at and consider seven tips to avoid a mess while exterior painting in St. Louis, MO.

1. Paint More Slowly

One of the biggest enemies of doing a clean job while you are painting is the speed with which you paint.

This may not make too much sense at first glance but if you think about it, it follows — painting too quickly will lead to a mess being made.

Firstly, you can almost depend on the fact that unless you have years of training in painting, trying to paint too quickly will get you paint strokes that do not adequately apply paint to the surface — and thus need to be redone.

In doing so it is much more likely that you will get paint in places you did not mean to get it — and so the real solution is to paint more slowly and deliberately.

2. Keep The Pets Inside

Of course you love your pets — and that’s great — but you are going to want to try to keep them indoors or at least on a good leash during the painting process.

It happens too often that an excited dog will get outside and in the middle of running to get a nice looking stick, knock over a paint can and make an awful mess.

Better to keep your sweet pets inside or otherwise restrained during the painting process and avoid the possibility of having them make a mess.

3. Carefully Use A Drop Cloth Or Tarp

In terms of keeping your area clean outside while you are painting, there are numerous things you can do but just doing nothing and hoping for the best will not work.

Paint drips are inevitable during the painting process, so the best thing you can do instead of just trying to prevent them from happening (more on this later) is to cover the area near where you are painting with a drop cloth or tarp to make sure that it doesn’t get anywhere it doesn’t belong.

4. Don’t Shake Your Paint Can

Shaking the paint can might seem like the quick path to get your paint mixed up, but it will give you bigger problems than it is worth.

Specifically, you’re going to find that shaking the paint can introduces bubbles into the paint and that paint will subsequently have bubbles as you are painting your home exterior

5. Don’t Paint On A Damp Day

If you paint on a day that’s not dry and that could be considered damp by most measures, you are going to create painting problems that will creep up later.

Specifically, you are going to possibly get bubbles on the surface of your paintwork that will be rather unpleasant and will need to be corrected.

6. Don’t Get Cheap Paint Rollers

If you’re looking for an almost surefire way to make a mess while painting the exterior of your home, get cheap paint rollers.

The lesser well made paint rollers will shed while you are painting, and additionally are more difficult to work with, making the small saving you get absolutely not worth it.

7. Don’t Paint From The Can

There are paint trays that are out there that are fantastic for applying paint to your brush and paint roller.

Skipping this and going straight from the paint can will almost always lead to a mess unless you are really careful in applying paint to the brush — but this will add a lot of time to your total painting time.

We would love the opportunity to be your go-to exterior painter in St. Louis, MO. Call us at 314-582-5272 to book a FREE estimate, and let us help you enhance the interior of your home so you can focus on other things.

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