Using Painter’s Tape when painting

Utilizing painters tape when painting is a common prep process for DIY’ers as well as professionals.

If you are looking for that crisp, sharp line or trying to prevent paint spatter and drips going where they should not be one of the many painters tapes should do the trick.

The only decision you have to make when purchasing tape is what tape will work best or what tape is designed for what you want to accomplish?

Frog Tape for example is a brand of tape and is manufactured in different types of tape for all kinds of surfaces and applications.  They have a delicate tape, multi surface tape, textured tape and shaped tape.   All though many would rather just purchase the old stand by “masking tape; the right tape for the individual project will ensure a clean line, no surface damage when removing the tape and the old pesky problem of taping a surface and when tape is removed you find that the paint has found a way under the tape and you have blurred line.

A couple of tips when working with tape:

– when covering baseboards is just adhere one edge of the tape and let the other edge stick out over the base board and this will save the baseboard from all the paint spatter from rolling the wall.

– after removing the electrical plug covers and switch covers tape off the receptacle to avoid the mistake of rolling over them

– clean crisp trim lines against walls.  paint your trim first, let the paint cure then tape off the trim to achieve razor sharp lines.

– stripes on walls:  We use a laser and tape.  We set the laser (found a big box store) and then tape up to the red laser line.  No pencil marks on the wall are needed.

This is a picture of a paint line when tape was NOT used.