Painting Tips I hope You Never Need

• When your children put a paintbrush in their hands and start dipping into the oil-based paint quicker than you can say STOP, Vaseline will eventually get the paint off their hands, their clothes and their shoes. If you scrape for a long time. At least they can stay busy wiping the Vaseline off their hands in the grass for awhile. This is a much safer solution than Mineral Spirits.

• This is by far, the stupidest tip I have ever used. The tip was to line your paint pan with aluminum foil. When you’re done painting, you simply throw away the foil, and there’s no need to clean your paint pan. I’ll tell you why this is stupid: Foil tears easily. Sometimes the foil isn’t wide enough to cover the whole pan, so you need to piece one on top of the other. The result? Paint seeping down under the foil, out of reach of your roller. Pretty soon, your rolling will loosen the foil off the edges, and the next thing you know, you’ll lift your roller, hit the wall and see that a wad of aluminum foil sticking to the wall.
• It’s a great idea to tint one of your primer cans with your final paint color. Explain this to your 12 year old, who is helping you paint, very clearly. Otherwise, he’ll notice that his white colored wall is much different than your Quietude primed wall – so before you know it he’ll dip into your tinted can and re-cover his white walls. In about 30 minutes, you’ll be out of primer, and you’ll soon be trying to figure out how to get your paint-stripped toddlers into the van and into the paint store to buy an extra can of primer.

• This box of painter’s plastic is perfect if you’d like to experience a nervous breakdown in your near future. Especially if you’re in an open area and there is a breeze. An old sheet would have worked much better.

• When your 4-year old decides he likes the color of your paint so much, that he dips his entire hands into the paint bucket, stop before you grab the rags. This is the perfect opportunity to capture those handprints you’ve been putting off for so long. Something I didn’t take advantage of when the opportunity presented itself. I was in the middle of a nervous breakdown from the plastic… and everything else.

Artwork by my 12 year old, at a previous, un-stressful, time.