Caught myself painting trim in the wrong order for 10 years

I was finishing up my basement last month and my buddy stopped by. He watched me cut in the trim before rolling the walls, which I always thought made sense. He just laughed and said I'd been making extra work for myself the whole time. Turns out if you do the walls first, you don't have to tape anything and any overspray just gets covered by the trim paint anyway. Anyone else have a basic finishing trick they learned way later than they should have?

3 comments

3 Comments

uma3064d ago

Oh man, so wait - does that mean you don't even have to be that careful with the wall paint near the trim?

brookepark4d ago

I actually watched a YouTube video from that contractor guy, Mike from Home RenoVision, who talked about this exact thing. He said you can use a paint edger tool or even just a angled brush and go fast along the trim without taping it off, as long as the trim has a smooth finish. The key is to keep a wet edge and don't let the paint dry before you wipe off any mistakes with a damp rag. I tried it on my baseboards last weekend and it worked way better than I expected, saved me so much time. So yeah, you probably don't have to be super careful if the trim is clean and smooth, just keep a wet cloth handy.

sagesingh4d ago

Ten years man, that's rough. I used to think doing the trim first was the only way to get clean lines because I was always scared of getting wall paint on the wood. But after reading this and trying it on my own living room last weekend, I totally changed my mind. I did the walls first with a cheap angled brush and kept a wet rag in my back pocket the whole time. Any little accident wiped right off before it dried. Trim paint covered the tiny mistakes anyway. Honestly it cut my taping time in half and my lines came out way straighter than when I used tape.

-1