The Do-It-Yourself Hero: Brush Up on Your Interior Painting

I'm a normal guy. I eat beans and potatoes and cornbread. I wear T-shirts and Levi's jeans. I'm perfectly happy with the color of my hair and the color of the living room. My gender-specific chromosomes come labeled "X" and "Y", and that's enough variety for me.

Lacking this rich chromosomal diversity, women are always trying to compensate. If it's on the menu, they'll order something called "kubey sawar" just to see what it is. They have different clothes for every season and every occasion, they frequently change their hair color, and they are extremely sensitive to the exact moment a home's decorative treatments become "tired." (For uninitiated males, the life span of paint, wallpaper, and curtains is a lot shorter than you would think.)

It's not the woman's fault . . . it's genetic. She's stuck with two boring "X" chromosomes and simply trying to make the best of it. With this in mind, if you live with a woman it's in your best interest to learn to paint.

Hard Lessons
Painting did not come naturally to me. By temperament, I tend to be an impatient perfectionist, not a good combination when the task at hand involves spreading a drippy colored liquid on one surface without getting it all over every adjacent surface. When the process goes well, it's tedious and deadly boring; when it doesn't go well, the meter bounces from annoyance to infuriation to abject despair.

I tackled my first painting project with the naïve enthusiasm of the neophyte. It couldn't be that hard . . . pick out a color and smear the paint on the wall, right? My first doubt appeared when the hardware store guy looked at the selected paint chip and asked, "Latex or oil?" Huh? Already, there was more to this than I had realized.

A quick explanation and I made my selection. Latex. Clean up with water. What could be simpler? I was feeling better already. I hardly noticed the hardware guy's raised eyebrows when he rang up my pre-packaged assortment of plastic-bristle brushes (Five handy sizes only $8.99!!) Then a roller and roller pan, and I was poised to become a Do-It-Yourself Hero!

That first effort did not go especially well. It was sort of like learning to swim . . . every stroke produced lots of splashing and spattering but forward progress was agonizingly slow. But the process was educational. I learned that plastic may not be the best material for paintbrush bristles; I learned that if you spin your roller real fast, tiny drops of paint spray all over the room; and I learned that choosing the easy-clean latex was about the only good decision I'd made.

Frustrations and Fixes
Over the years, painting projects came and went. I actually got pretty good at rolling, but one essential skill eluded me: achieving a clean line where walls intersect with ceilings or baseboards. (Painters have a technical term for this technique . . . it's called "cuttin' in.") I trolled the paint aisles, looking for answers. I tried every gimmick. Paint pads and sponges. Masking tape and mittens. Guides and gadgets. I even purchased a pair of official white painter's overalls. Nothing worked.

But I learned something important: if your cuttin' in is less than perfect, it's not too noticeable if you employ soft lighting and use a low-contrast pastel palette. You must, at all costs, avoid dark rich colors in juxtaposition with brighter lighter colors. (In professional do-it-yourself parlance, that's called a "work-around." When you're in way over your head, work-arounds are really important.)

I was actually pretty confident of my painting skills when my wife announced that our living room was looking tired. (Remember that term?) Nothing that a fresh coat of paint wouldn't fix, she said. "No problem," I said. "You pick out the paint and I'll put it on." Words to remember, words to regret.

After much color-charting and fabric-swatching, she decided the perfect makeover hue was something called "Salsa". That should have set off a warning bell, but since paint colors tend to have fanciful names, the portent went unnoticed. Unnoticed, that is, until the lid came off the first bucket of paint. Salsa turned out to be a deep, rich, dark red. And that deep, rich, dark red was going to lay right up against a white ceiling and white baseboards and white window frames.

Cuttin' in was an absolute disaster. No matter how carefully I stroked, a few errant bristles would spring from the pack leaving a spidery tracing of salsa against the ceiling. In desperation, I dug out the pads and sponges . . . no good. The highly touted blue painter's tape just made things worse. The final effect, when seen from a distance, was that of a white ceiling trimmed in red lace.

After about two hours of this, I had run through the entire painter's emotional A-list: angst building into anger, and finally a downward spiral into the depths of anguish. As I teetered on the brink of meltdown, my wife announced it was time to get professional help. I didn't know if she planned to hire a painter or a mental health counselor but any relief was welcome.

Secrets Revealed
When she returned a half hour later, she had two bags. One was immediately recognizable as fast food-comfort for less than five bucks. The other bag held a three inch wide polyester bristle angle-edge paintbrush and a sales receipt for $22.95. Huh? For one paintbrush??

While we ate the burgers, she explained that the brush was an official "cuttin' in" brush, according to some guys she met at the paint store. She was pretty sure they were professionals; they were wearing white overalls. I was pretty sure they were just shilling for the paint store owner, helping him sell expensive brushes to unsuspecting novices.

After lunch, I crawled back up the ladder armed with my brand new professional twenty-dollar brush and a serious dose of skepticism. Imagine my surprise when the very first stroke produced a sharp clean line of paint right up to the ceiling edge! With every stroke, my confidence grew; soon I was pulling long razor-edged lines of salsa across the top of the wall. The brush was magic . . . I had become a "cutting in" pro!

Remember the old adage about the right tool for the job? The right tools are seldom cheap, and that applies to paint brushes . . . a $30 brush is cheaper than hiring a painter. Here are a few more tips: for trim work or cutting in, use a 2-3" angled sash brush; for latex or acrylic paint, use synthetic bristles like nylon, polyester, or a poly-nylon blend; and for oil base or alkyd paint, use natural bristle (real animal hair) brushes.

White overalls look cool, but quality brushes can make you a Do-It-Yourself Hero.