Greetings all,
In addition to building the furniture for my new house, I've been doing a lot of assorted remodeling, and I've recently rediscovered my hatred of painter's tape. Last weekend I painted my bathroom in a sort of Mondriaan style to keep myself busy (blocks of primary colors divided by bold black lines set onto a white background) It turned out pretty good, but I had a problem with some of the paint coming right up with the tape along the edges when I pulled it off. I can (and already have) touch it up by hand, but this is an irritating problem I've had both with my current projects, and back when I was doing remodeling for a living.
This is no doubt going to come up again for me, so I was just wondering if anyone here has come up with a good way to make sure that the tape comes off a freshly painted wall cleanly. I was thinking that I *could* score along the edge of the tape with a utility knife before pulling it off, but one slip, and it's going to look like crap. I saw one of those home-destruction shows on TLC a while back where they were using painter's caulk on the tape somehow to make clean lines on a wall, but I wasn't really paying attention at the time and don't care to have to sand and reprime a wall at some future point because I thought I *maybe* remembered how to do it.
Other useful information here is that I always either skim-coat and prime walls before painting, or wash with TSP to degloss existing paint that is in good condition. I pretty much always use water-based semi-gloss or satin, and it seems like the semi-gloss gives me more trouble than the satin. (I can't seem to get flat paint to *work* at all- it takes 6 or 7 coats and still looks blotchy)
Any thoughts?
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