How To Paint With No Streaks
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With the Summer time finally here, many of you are out there painting. It's that time of the year where we start to get out and look at where we need to repaint the home, either inside or out. Often, we see DIYers or renovators spend some serious dollars on paint, and they end up with a lot of streaks and not quite sure why they can't achieve what the professional painter gets. With some careful guidance and paying attention to a few key points, you can assure you have a streak free painted wall.
1. Firstly, always keep a wet edge.
When you are painting large walls, ensure that you don't let the edge that you're just about to continue on with dry out. Things like priming the wall first is important and not letting the area to be too dry and warm, because that will absorb and suck it up, and you end up with that dry edge, and it's always difficult to then get that wet edge working.
Good quality paints will always allow you good working time to ensure that you've got a nice wet edge and it blends in nicely as you're going up and down that wall.
2. Secondly, lay it on and then smooth it off.
Don't skimp out when you're painting and try and work that paint into the surface over and over to the point where you actually are working it in and you are creating things like those dry edges.
You've got to ensure to get that smooth finish. Don't be afraid to put the paint on in a nice liberal coat and then you can smooth it off. That is the key. You can actually hear on the roller and you will see how it actually works on it. It's always good to actually try a little spot on a wall or a surface first to see the difference, so you can get the right technique. Keep a piece of timber or board near you and try that out first so you get the technique right, so when you start on the wall, you get the perfect finish that you want.
3. Don't stand too far away from the wall
Get close up and personal with your paint. You don't want to be stretching out with your brush. It's really important that you stay close to it, with both the roller and your brush.
4. If you get any lumps in your paint work on the wall, remove them while it's wet
Don't let it dry and think, oh, I'll sand this off after. If you see it, you can get up to it. You get a card or new spatula. Remove those lumps, and then you can actually brush or roll over that while it's wet, and it just all blends in nicely. If you wait until after, you can always see those sand marks, and then you've got to give it another re-coat, which is going to take you longer, and sometimes from a distance you'll see that in certain lights, depending on what type of gloss paint you've got. So get rid of those lumps while the paint is wet.
5. Don't forget the second coat
This is where you give it that nice tight coat. We tend to forget how to treat our rollers particularly after the first coat. When you're actually going to keep your roller fresh, a lot of people put Glad Wrap over them to keep it fresh for the second coat. But remove all the excess paint first. Don't have that body of roller just saturated with paint and think, oh, I'll just put some Glad Wrap or plastic around that to keep it wet.
Remove the excess paint. The idea is just to stop the roller from drying out. But you don't want paint to be building up on that roller, because it will slightly dry, and then when you come out and you give it that second coat, those streaks will start to show, and you'll be really annoyed. And you don't want that. So ensure you get that excess paint off the roller first.
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