WHY Caulk Your Tape? Painting Perfect Lines From A to Z

this Christie Idaho pain around paint like TV today is a good video on caulking your tape you know as a painter we use caulking as a painter we use tape but should you use caulking and tape together to get really straight lines this video is gonna go over that method I'm gonna talk you know some ends about ins and outs on it when we use it when we don't use it and how to actually do that method to get perfectly straight lines and just talk then depth about it so stay tuned for this video if you haven't subscribed for our channel to our channel hit the subscribe button hit the notification Bell because if you don't hit the subscribe and the notification it really doesn't do anything you're not gonna get notified next time they come out with a new video it's free simple easy to do and any of the tools and accessories I'm using in the video if you ever want to learn more about them just check out the comment section down below and if you've got questions or comments about this video or any other video leave them down in the comment section below but that's going with the video now alright so here we go I'm gonna show you some tips and tricks and the method I use using frog tape and clear caulking so I've got a surface right here this is a really rough wall this would be have not concerned maybe I've knocked down but this is a really heavy orange peel texture now you can try to cut that line in it's gonna take you a long time and nearly impossible to get a perfectly straight line on that and I'm actually gonna even do a curved line right here you see blue tape by here frog tape has two different types of frog tape now they got blue frog tape and green frog tape there is a cost difference because this is contractor pacs it's not a premium paper but it's the same thing they both have the paint block technology on the outside of the tape it's a product a polymer that swells up when liquid hits it so on these bumpy surfaces paint can't leak underneath there but when you get a rough surface like this you may still get some strain leakage here and there because you've got some really heavy peaks and valleys so when you put your tape out you definitely want to push down on it but that's where the your caulking comes into play and why I use clear pocket and it just adds that added measure of sealing your tank now there's some tips and tricks when it comes to using clear caulking and how you got to go about doing it to be effective I know some people out there and utilize pre-wetting they're tape so you get your tape on there and you can take a wet sponge and I can just rub a wet sponge over this and that will activate that polymer and it will swell up and it kind of does the same thing is caulking but the caulking itself is thick and so it's even going to be more effective when it when it comes to filling in those peaks and valleys I'm gonna use green frog tape I really like it's a green I like the paper on the green a little bit better than the blue it's a little bit thinner and when you pull your tape because it's thinner it doesn't leave as big of a dam and when you're using coffee and this is kind of important the dam is when you pull the tape off the ridge that is left from the caulking to the part that's not talking you're gonna have this Ridge and that's called the dam the smaller the dam the less likely you're gonna see it so the thinner of the paper the smaller the dam so this this if you're using frog tape to get clean lines again you're not using clear caulking the blue tape is very effective like on smooth surfaces and stuff because it still has that polymer on the outside I'm just gonna take a mask align this line to be straight I'll just you know simulate you can see how you can even curve frog on green paper better than the blue so we've got a line right here so now I've got my line and this is once again a very bumpy surface so I'm gonna just press my tape down and this would be really impossible to get a straight line on so got my coffee frog tape and then I actually just do will do all Fable do one with three wedding will do one with nothing and then you wanna with clear quality but we can even see the difference these a good test right there I've never actually used the pre-wedding method I've always used clear talking now if you have between like baseboards I've got white baseboards down here if you have like a gap in there in that baseboard and you're using your caulking to fill the gap and then paint over clear caulking shrinks quite a bit and it doesn't fill as much as the white coughing does and so sometimes we'll use white coffee but we only use white talking if they're surface we're masking over is white anything other than white we use clear so one of the key things that getting straight lines right before you paint you should always you know pressure take down with your hands I'm going to take and caulk one of the tapes right here I'll good caulking the top one what I actually do caulking I'm doing a lot of it I do like to wear rubber gloves I use latex gloves I really like the Raven gloves big fan of those gloves so I use Raven gloves because I just don't want cocking all of my hands and if you actually read the SDS on caulking this up you know there are some things in caulking that you probably don't want on your hands absorbed into your body your liver and your kidneys and stuff so did I get to wear rubber gloves especially when you've been talking okay so here we go this is just clear talking and this is a high quality coffee now the keys is I don't want to put a big you know be too cuffing on here because I'm actually wiping all the caulking away the only thing we're actually doing is trying to fill those voids along this edge and that's what our coffee does so it's just a small bead of caulking that we're gonna wipe off the more caulking there is the more its kind of smear around with your brush and stuff and you don't want that effect so I'm just gonna take it just put a nice very small bead of caulking on there you can kind of see it this is there's not very much on there and it doesn't have to be perfectly straight because you're going to wipe it you know over so whether you're on the wall or on the on the tape it doesn't really matter now my talking's on there just take my hello and I like to have you wet rag or something I can just wipe my iam on too so I'm just gonna wipe it on the press and get all of it off there's only gonna be black like a thin residue left on this tape right here so the cocking swiped on there so this is a really rough surface so we'll see if we have any success so that one's down right there and I'm gonna take it free wet the blue one with this pretty wet the blue one and we'll leave the bottom of green one now some of the keys to using this method of using the caulking you have to paint over the coffee before it dries this is critical if it dries when you go to peel it off it's gonna bridge from here to here because this is gonna glue itself from the tape to the wall and you're gonna peel it off in what we call like sharp teeth on here and those are all going to be touch-ups so now that it's on there I want to begin painting over that caulking you know right away so I'm just gonna paint my wall do what this just could simulate baseboards it could be window trim it could be just anything wherever it could be just stripe on a wall and I don't want to use a whole lot of force and I'm not taking my brush and really pushing on it because I don't want to force you know my paint underneath the tape so I'm just like brushing it lightly I would typically if I was you know rolling the wall this was around the trim I'm gonna back roll over this you know I'm gonna roll with a four inch roller and then roll my wall so we only activated the top so we're not gonna be looking at the bottoms we're gonna be looking at the tops so I'm gonna tell you it like right now it's um I'm just working right along on this top one one of the key things with this method like I said is do not let your caulking dry so typically you cannot do a whole room and caulk it and then come back like if you're doing baseboards window trim this up and then come back and pay is your gonna have that bridging effect and you're gonna get sharp teeth pulls on it and then you're gonna have a lot of touch-up so you don't we typically work just one wall at a time if you have two guys going doing this method you can work two walls at a time but we're typically working one wall at a time so key element you cannot let the caulking dry before you pull the tape now the second key element is you cannot let the paint dry before you pull the tape or you're gonna have the same effect how'd you get a lot of questions you were to say well it's going to crack typically on 99% of the walls we do the the paint's are satin paints there's a lot of acrylic and satin paints they're very flexible just like the caulking is flexible so and then the two components we got latex coffee and underneath here and then we've got latex paint on the top they both are compatible they both dry at the same time the same rate and we don't get any cracking or any splitting using satin paints this is a satin paint right here so that's if you do use flat paint you may get some cracking using flat paint so we've used flat paints in the pack pass with this method and we'll just go back and touch up where it does crack but we've had success we've been doing this method for probably 15 years and never had an issue with the coffee in incompatible if you use the silicone caulking it's not gonna work we use a latex paint a latex caulking with the latex paint so it's a water-based made this is not an oil-based paint so now I'll pull off the top one and you can see my perfectly straight line on an extremely bumpy service now you can see the bottom where it actually bled through right there because it didn't have any poppy on it and you can see how bad that is now let's try pulling the blue tape off this was pre wetted and so it's so that's people in it so there's a few spots that it's like doing right here because these were too big of valleys that the tape is swelling on the tape the polymer couldn't fill that in you can see the bottom of it there's more bleeding because I didn't wet the bottom so that's I mean if you can get a close-up and you can feel this wall that is extremely bumpy and that's still pretty ineffective so that blue tape is very effective for giving you a clean line I can take and just touch those things up fairly quickly so I can use that tape make that line and touch those little things up a lot faster than I can try to hand cutting that line here's frog tape down here alone that doesn't have no water or no clear caulking so to me this is not a bad line on this bumpy surface it's thick the thickness of the tape made that strainer in some areas right there but you got a little bit of bleeding you can see the difference using clear caulking and this is why we use clip caulking is to get that perfectly straight line absolutely amazing you see it's got a little bit of a dam there the ridge that's left behind the quick talking puts amazing in fact perfectly straight lines some of the questions I'll get is you know this was the baseboard and this is the wall you know now that I pulled my tape what if I have to to coat my walls so if I have to to coat my walls I know that in advance I'm gonna be rolling my wall down to you know about a quarter of an inch from where my masking already is in the put my first coat on my cut ends will be done next and then while my cut in is wet then I'll roll my second coat onto the wall and then I'll pull my tape that way I don't get any stippling on the baseboards now you will see us do this method on and do a second coat we'll take and pull the tape you'll do a few before and some certain circumstances in some of my videos you've probably seen that but we're using a very high quality paint a very high quality roller I like the premiere rollers in the Audio pane were using in the rollers they do not be you know any stippling or any splatter on the baseboards and so we can get away with it but best practices as always you know tape roll your first coat come down to about a quarter of an inch and then do all your cut ends and we work wall the wall if you're by yourself you're gonna have to work one wall do that whole wall and then move to the next walk your two people you can typically work two walls at a time I do a lot of people ask me what paint brush I like and on interiors really like the premiere Montauk this is a Montauk's which is a 9 X and Oreo blend brush and a great brush from premiere so there you have it some of the tips and tricks that have worked for me for the last 15 years painting perfectly straight lines and what this does and I know some of you people out there gonna argue you know brush and roll or I can cut in the straight line I can do this I can do that some people are gonna think I'm you know eliminating the need for the guy you know that can handle a brush this does not this just makes effective members of your team quickly I can teach you know kid up the street the high school Community College get how to do this method in about two to two or three weeks you'll be doing that around doors door jambs window trim and baseboards and you actually start making a company money right off the bat it's very effective we always need somebody's you're the professional the journeyman that's got five years of experience cutting and sealing lines because they're sealing lines are always cut in by hand there's always a need for the guy with the brush we're not eliminating that journeyman so don't be afraid so Chris I hear the this painter on YouTube who has this awesome trip with tape and call T to get perfectly straight lines you know what I think I've seen some of this videos and I think I've heard that trick actually works did we go by that guy's family so here we are we're going to talk about our coffee and tape method of getting perfectly straight lines how we go about doing it and try to answer some the mysteries and some of the questions about this method that we keep getting so we got a reference that we can just tell people to go to here online hey boy do we get questions a whole lots of questions um what is the tape we use we use frog tape and we use 3m 20/20 tape when did we use these two tapes John so typically what we'll tell our guys is default to the 20/20 tape but we'll use frog tape any time where the the trim is freshly painted so like we'll have sprayed the trim and if we're trying to get some of those lines done that day will use frog tape because the adhesives a little bit gentler or anytime we're working on something that's metal or like a like a stain wood because it just gives us that extra protection of sealing up that tape and making sure we've got nice crystal clear lines and one of the reasons between the two tapes too is this is a production tape it's only about a buck twenty year old this some I think we pay maybe like four or five dollars a roll for this yeah and um this has like this magic pixie dust on it that is on the outside edges of the tape super cool that swells and it keeps paint or it keeps the caulking from bleeding underneath so this is an amazing tape it's really good for smooth surfaces like glass and so then we use two different types of caulking and one of the caulking says of clear caulking and one is a white caulking and clear caulking the clear a lot of people are we aren't getting people from other parts of the world that say that they didn't even know clear coffee and exists or they can't even get it you don't have to use clear caulking but there are some situations when it is highly recommended and that's on like going over stained wood yeah some like what would you think any time so we'll use clear any time when the tram or the wall color is not white or similar to a white so if you've got stained wood or if you've got a trinket like some people have a dark trim color something like that we don't want that little white line of caulking to show up and the clear shouldn't be confused with silicone which is not paintable so you want to look for a paintable clear latex caulk and a lot of people get confused when we're using fair caulking because it comes out white but try and clear and so I get it addressed and it's it's amazing all these magic things that these painting companies come up with but it's you'll see it will be wiping it and it's gonna be white but it does in a few hours it'll dry clear and one of the reasons why we don't use clear all the time because you may ask why don't we always use clear the clear versus white the white caulking is a lot thicker and there's a reason why we like a thicker copying John what is that it builds it lasts a little bit longer to me just and then it doesn't shrink as much like to me the clear caulking because it's there's less body and it's mostly acrylic it dries that clear but it shrinks quite a bit and that's where you might run into some problems with any gaps so if you've got a gap between your trim and your wall that that clear doesn't really hold that gap as well as a white work yep so eventually when the caulking and the paint dries it's gonna the clear is gonna shrink a lot more and you may have to go back over it and redo it so that's why we wouldn't use clear 100% of the time is beep is to me the shrink ability of it extremes a lot so we're gonna walk you through some of the processes and how we go about doing it and we're gonna show you we do get a lot of questions people will be asking us you know when do we do jet method and we use it we've got right here situations we've got a door jamb and we got baseboards in these walls but we've already done the walls and some people gonna have a question well why aren't we doing that first why are we doing last and there's a lot of different I guess scenarios what we would call it why we do what we do and what we walk into each house the majority of the time you know we're gonna do it one way but they're arguably certain situations where we would change our method and this would be one and we have a light color and explained on with the light color and why we're not concerned about maybe like a lowing and stuff like that yeah so typically two things we've got going for us one we're using a product that's self levelling and so it has a bit longer of an open time it levels out so I'm a little less worried about issues like differences in stippling - it's a light color so anytime we've got a light color or I've got a color that uses a lot of natural oxides as the pigment you don't have to worry about the way those those pigments lay out and flashing and that's typically what's happening with haloing you're using blacks blues greens reds things that aren't really natural pigments and those things that's where you'll end up seeing those issues so that's when we're really careful about our process to make sure we do our cuttings first and then roll the fields last this color it's it's very very natural it's light we don't have those issues and so we have the freedom it's one of those things you just you get creative you experiment a little bit and you try new things we know with this color we've got the freedom we can work ahead rollin which is great because we had sprayed the trim what we needed to buy some time while that was drying well we can just start rolling walls and ceilings and then come back in after that trim set up and start trimming those pieces out yeah so this paint that we use in the product is and the color is very forgiving so we can roll these walls we will these walls yesterday we could come back and do these cut ends and you're not gonna see any haloing you don't have to worry about keeping a wet edge if you're using dark colors our process is going to completely change and we're probably as a team gonna be working from room but you've just got to take each situation and evaluate the situation and determine you know what you're gonna do win but when it comes to the caulking and how we go about talking and reading straight lines with the tape and caulking that typically is a straight door process that you do the same every time so I do see some gloves right here John you like wearing these types of gloves right here when you call why do you wear those gloves well I like having soft hands for one but it really it comes down to I I don't want to spend a bunch of time at the end of the day cleaning a bunch of stuff off of my hands it's really dry here in the winter especially so then you've got paint you've got caulking on your hands which is gonna dry them out then they're gonna be dry because it's winter anyway and I just I like having clean hands and it allows me to if I get stuff on my hands but then I need to go handle a door that we just painted I don't want to get that stuff on the door I can take them off I can move on and you know we buy ours from Costco they're super super cheap if you pick them up somewhere like Costco and it's just a nice way to keep everything clean and keep that professional look it's a very cheap expense even if you go through like ten of them a day these things are our pennies I like using like gloves like these on the exterior of a house I caught with these on an exterior but when I get to an interior when your caulking detail has to look a lot cleaner and a lot more precise these gloves aren't gonna work and all we either use bare hands or I'll use gloves but bare if you're using your bare hands you gotta read the ingredients on caulking and if you're concerned about absorbing those chemicals to your skin you probably should use some gloves and they're gonna keep your hands cleaner just like John said so let's see anything else we can talk about the caulking method I think we might as well just go and show you what it looks like right here we're working this is a huge gigantic house I don't know five six thousand square feet we've been working on it now this is the fifth day we're gonna be done but we're using the three and twenty tape it 2020 tape in this hallway and then we've been using some frog tape so we're going to show you that so let's go so here's the first situation I've got a door jamb right here and some baseboards just caught this right here and I'm just gonna put a little small because the bead of caulking itself you're really just wiping it all off so you're not trying to put a whole lot of caulking on the more coffee and you put off on the more you're gonna have to wipe off so I'm just gonna put a little tiny bead on this caulking or on this tape right here and I don't want to get too far ahead of myself because the caulking dries pretty fast so I'm gonna do you know short runs short sections I got a little bita coffee in there now I'm just gonna begin wiping it off and one of the nice things about us putting this nine-inch paper down I can just wipe the excess caulking on the paper right here so I'm just gonna keep you know wiping it clean here so I don't want a whole lot of caulking buildup on there I'm trying to wipe the majority that bit off cuz if when you peel your tape if you have a lot of caulking on there it's gonna create what we call a big dam and it's gonna have this nice big Ridge on there that doesn't look so good and then I'm gonna after I put the caulking on I don't want to wait a whole long time because the caulking does dry very fast now I'm gonna paint over the top of the caulking and I don't want to push too hard if I push really hard I'm forcing the caulking underneath the tape I just want to just you'll brush this paint on there gently and I like to go back over where I brushed so the stippling will match the stippling that was rolled on the wall so I'm just gonna continue working up this door door jamb and then once I get done I'm going to just pull this section of tape off and we do get people asking us yo all the time do we pull it when it's wet or dry you don't want the caulking to dry and you don't want the paint to dry you want to pull it on wow if you wait till it dries either one of them dry it skims over what's gonna happen is the dried paint or the dry caulking it's gonna bridge the gap between the tape and the wall and you're gonna pull it and it's probably gonna peel the tape off the wall so now I'm gonna begin just peeling my tape off and if you go too fast yo if I want to just go a nice you know even steady speed if you go too fast it's gonna flick paint off and what we got kind of it'll look like spiders and flex and it'll get on your trim so I'm just gonna pull that off and then I got a nice crisp clean line so here's a situation where we're going to use clear caulking instead and so we've got frog tape down to give us a little bit of an extra insurance on it on this this tile backsplash will actually mask back off the grout the nice part about this is that clear caulking is going to go into all those pores fill it all in we'll paint it pull it and then it'll dry clear everywhere where it leak through that tape or pores and then again right here we've got wood where we're gonna put that clear caulking in there it's gonna seal that line up and then when it dries you won't see like Chris had referred to earlier that damn show up being white it'll dry out clear and so all you'll see is the great color and then the wood so here we go and the clear caulking is a lot thinner and goes a lot further there so usually I'll do about 60% of what I need to call and I'll drag all that excess on down just brilliant as needed pull all the excess off what's important with the when you're doing this method is you don't want to dig in with your bristles so you're going to pull all that caulking away so you want kind of a nice soft touch and to pull your bristles down instead of in cover over the stippling with our warrant roller [Music] so you don't love that roller to hit the edge of the taper it's gonna take that coffee wallah then like Chris said you want to go slowly and then we always pull towards where we're going instead of away and then also is going to help that paint and caulking from not flipping back we're gonna be left with a nice crisp straight line so here's another situation I'm gonna show you right here I'm gonna be talking this baseboard right here there was a little crap right here and if you do have any cracks or gaps what you want to do when you install your tape is just leave those cracks or gaps exposed that way your caulking will fill that and it won't be shown anymore probably won't be able to see it on video but there's a little crack right here and whoever did the installation of the tape just left it expose I'm gonna put a bead of caulking right here just wrap it around this corner let's again I'm using white coffee right here just going to wipe this off and in this situation you can see we haven't rolled walls yet and in this method you can't let your paint or caulking dry so I'm going to be putting the paint and caulking on right here and then I'm going to be rolling over it yet to get them stippling to match the stippling that will go here when I pull this you're probably gonna have a question what about paint dripping on the baseboards we do use a super high quality paint we use the best rollers that roller sleeves covers that money can buy and so it's very very rare that won't ever run into a situation where it will drip if you use proper rolling and application techniques so on occasion if we get ahead of the person rolling we're not so concerned about it if a drip or something got on to the baseboards or the skirting down here we would just touch it up but it's very rare if almost never that that does happen so I'm sure somebody would have that question so I'm just gonna put that on and then I'm gonna peel tape off slowly and there you have it and occasionally you're gonna run into a situation where maybe that the tape wasn't down correctly or it came up and that that situation right there if I would have ran over my finger the tape before I install the caulking and what it pushed it down but I can go back touch that up or refix it with tape again once it dries one of the other tips when you're using this trick is you want to make sure that coffee or that tape isn't tight against the wall but you're actually want to leave about an eighth of an inch of space from the law to the edge of the tape so you can see there's that little white white line there and the whole point of this is you want to give that when you pull that caulking out it's gonna radius it you want to give that caulking somewhere to land and be flat otherwise it's going to be so built up that you will see a little white edge coming there and that's because you either one didn't wipe enough of the caulking off or to put your tape too close to the wall so that gives you that nice straight line and it helps your line stand out as being extra straight to which it's always a nice look we'll run our bead of coffee in there really press that in and pull out the excess and you want to make sure you know the reason we're wiping all of that caulking off is you want your finger to be nice and clean each time because if you're leaving Gummy's coffee and dried caulking because it was left on your finger you're not gonna have that nice smooth radius you're going to have kind of dummy chunky looking radius [Music] I'm like Chris said you want to roll or you want to call in small sections because you want to be able to get to all of this while that caulking is still wet because if it starts to dry you're gonna end up not with laser sharp lines but with lines that look like they've all been pulled apart and they're half dry again immediately after that's done we will pull it hold the tape up try to pull it up towards where you're going you're left with a nice clean line all the way down so there you have it we're going to leave you with a few key pointers to perfect this method and one is use right clocking so clear caulking on anything like stained wood cabinets and anything that's not white use white caulking is it's thicker and use it over any type of white trim or anything any other pointers you got ya frog tape or 20/20 so the type of tape will matter on what you're taping on to and you also want to think about the cost involved with that you don't want to be using frog tape all the time if 2020 it's going to do because you're gonna run up that materials bill pretty fast always pull your tape off before your paint and caulking drives or you're gonna have some problems yeah and then make sure you've got enough space away from the walls that you can get that nice crisp clean line and when you apply when you do your cut ends there's a lot of situations you know that vary when it comes to that you're not always gonna do it the same time you could roll your first coat and didn't do your cut ends you could roll your second coat and then do your cut ends or you can do your caulking and taping nothing before you roll your walls and we do get a lot of comments back from people who say well hey a real painter should be able to cut a straight line without using tape and that's true eventually if you're a professional painter you do want to hone your craft so that you can cut a straight line freehand and that's great this Kristiana hole painter in this video we're going to show you how to get laser straight lines when you're painting metal windows and we got some runs out of windows right here got other wrapped in drywall and we're gonna show you the process we've got some frog tape on here we've taped it with frog tape but now we always go back and actually caulk it with clear caulking and then we actually paint it and the whole reasoning behind the clear caulking is that the frog tape in itself typically on a food smooth surface you're usually never gonna get anything bleeding through it but the caulking is just an additive measure just to make sure nothing bleeds underneath and if you use white caulking and if any of the caulking bleeds underneath the tape it'll leave like those spots will be white when it dries if you use clear talking the clear caulking is actually gonna dry clear and you won't see it but the caulking is just an added measure to seal that tape and if there's any crack in the surface in-between where you're painting the caulking is also going to fill that crack and we typically if the if the windows were white we'd want to use a white coffee because the white caulking just thicker and it's gonna fill the crack and just kind of shrink less and another you know thing to know is if you're painting with flat walls and bad some people state to me and some of my comments below in my videos that the caulking or the paint is actually cracking and it's a method you do not want to use if you're painting with black paints because the flat paints are always gonna crack on the caulking we're always using satin paints under walls and we never run into that issue but we've got our tape on here we've masked it off major outer corners everything is nice and sharp we've messed it off with frog tape you could actually use 3m 20:20 tape that's what we typically use a lot of but the frog tape is just another kind of measure to make sure your lines are laser sharp so you've got this and now we're going to show you what it is like to actually it and then paint it and we always take once we paint it we pull our masking because if the caulking ever dries or your paint ever dries when you go to peel at the the that comes from the tape to the surface or the caulking from the tape to the surface when you peel it it's gonna peel that right off with it the paint with it so it's gonna it's what we call bridging and it's just going to take Euler paint off so you want to make sure you apply your caulking do your window and then paint your window and then pull it off all at once don't ever leave it for any length of time where it's gonna dry then have some questions and comments in the past how long you know until it dries that all depends on the temperature of the room depends on the humidity the room but on on average if we're painting a room doing that back then you're gonna want to when you're halfway down with a room pull the the tape if you're doing a window we just do one window at a time and fold the tape so here we go I'm going to show you what it looks like so we got Zach he's gonna start applying the caulking to the windows and then he's gonna paint it and just gonna run around and just run a quick bead around here it's just you don't want to apply too much games cuz then you just got too much to wipe off and get rid of and you want enough to apply that it's actually going to just seal the edge of that tape if there is a crack like this the windows here along the bottom of the snow there's yo criticize crap that we actually want to actually use the talkin to fill that [Music] Zak's just now he's applied with the coffee now as soon as he's down to find a coffee now he's starting to [Music] kind of brush uses a quiz I'm against crush [Music] were you using for your bucket you got two gallon with one gallon screen in it yeah what a two inch more so you've got yeah what is that 4 inch 4 inch roller you put 3h and snap yeah see you got a blue glove on your other hand Zach I think some people are gonna probably want to know why you're wearing a blue go level on your other hand I had a bull phone but then one of them ripped isn't it so you typically wear gloves on both hands yeah why is that just to keep the paint off of it just so you don't have to spend as much time cleaning them at the end of the day yeah [Music] so Zach says cruising right along just rushing this window now he just cut it in with his brush now he's just gonna roll sexually we got about a foot windowsill on he's just gonna fill it all in with his 4-inch roll or to finish it up and then he's gonna actually pull the tape [Music] so now zach is actually done painting this window now he's actually just pulled off the tape very carefully and then just gonna dispose them he's got wet paint black caulking all over it so hopefully you can see this laser line right here that zach is actually created on this window can't get any cleaner or straighter than that so making a laser straight line on your wall or on your trim where it meets the wall is a very simple process and we're going to be using you can use just frog tape and frog tape when paint actually begins to bleed through the tape under the surface it has a product that actually swells and stops the bleeding and will give you straight lines we've had really good luck with frog tape on smooth surfaces like glass and metal but when you're dealing with a wall and anything rough it's a good idea to use this method what we're actually using to assure that you get a laser straight line and we're going to be using you can either use frog tape or masking tape but we typically like to ensure an ultra laser straight line we like to use just frog tape and the caulking so I'm going to begin the process by showing you on this wall our laser straight line and we're gonna just put some frog tape on this wall right here so if this gonna so just friends since if this was gonna be we're gonna be doing a stripe on this wall I've got my tape on there and now with frog tape I can go go over this and I can paint it now and you're gonna get a fairly straight line a lot better than you're gonna get just using straight masking tape because of that technology the frog tape has in it where it actually swells but to ensure that it's completely sealed this is where the caulking comes in play and now we're going to use our clear caulking to go over this so I'm going to show you this step now this is where the secret of giving a laser straight line comes into play so we got our frog tape on the wall here can for instance this could be a stripe in a bedroom or this could be your trim where it meets the wall but say we're trying to make a laser straight line in a kid's bedroom now I'm gonna be painting this side this is where my wall color is gonna stay but I'll be painting this side so I'm going to take and just put a nice small bead of caulking right over with this edge of my tape is my frog tape now that I take that and I'm going to why off and let's just push it down and wipe off all this excess and what you're actually doing is pushing that clear caulking and smear net right along the edge of your FrogTape right here to actually add an additional seal to that frog tape and part of this the key of this process is is to not let that clear caulking dry before you paint it you're gonna want to paint over that before it dries and then the next very key step is to actually pull your tape before the paint dries or the coughing drives is if you leave it set on there and the paint dries what happens if you're using a satin paint the paint is gonna bridge from the tape to the wall and when you go to peel off your tape you could pull off some of the actual paint and it's gonna leave a jagged line so the key steps do this is the smear on the clear caulking and getting try to get all of it off all you want is just that edge seal right there and get all the excess of that cocking off just wipe it on a wet rag I like to actually use a wet rag wipe the excess caulking that I have on a wet rag and then begin the painting process and don't do too much coughing if you're doing a whole lot of area or a lot of lines or a lot of trim if you do too much and the caulking dries before you get to painting it then the process isn't gonna work so now well my caulking is still wet I'm gonna begin the painting process and when I'm actually doing painting over the tape I don't actually like to roll over it I like to actually use a brush because the brush isn't gonna push it underneath the tape either or force it underneath the tape I just brush over the top of it and just gonna cruise I long rusted over the top of this make sure it's completely covered 100% and then you're gonna pull your tape off I'm going to show you what it looks like I'll pull my tape off right here and there's my laser straight line right there and this is you can't see in the video but this is a orange peel and textured wall so it's a pretty rough wall and there you have a straight line and one of the key things is that clear caulking and some of the clear caulking may bleed underneath the tape but since it's clear you'll see it it's gonna be white but it actually dries clear so it goes underneath the parts of the tape that's raised that can't seal itself over this rough surface so that's another key element to this whole coffee process is using clear coughing here's a closer look of the actual line I just painted it's still wet but you can see the roughness to the wall and yet that line is still laser sharp so when it comes to actually doing your trim and getting laser straight lines on your trim the process is exactly the same I'm just gonna take my frog tape I'm gonna run a line on my base where right here and one of the keys to this step right here is any existing paint that's is actually on to your trim or your baseboard you want to make sure you leave that exposed so it'll get painted over so you'd have a nice straight line so I'm just gonna run my frog tape along my trim right here so I got my frog tape down what make sure you press it down really good now I'm gonna take my queer caulking just put a really small bead you don't need a whole lot you just want just enough that's actually gonna seal that tape and never run my finger along that wiping up all the coughing off there and once you you're wiping it off and it's actually pressing it down into the tape right there and once again it's good to just have a wet sponge or wet rag to wipe your hands onto now before the caulking dries one of the key things before the caulking dries is to do your painting I'm gonna just sit here and paint on my tram so you can't do too much to get ahead of yourself too much because once again do not let that caulking dry and do not let the paint dry before you peel off your masking so I typically like to do me if I'm doing a whole bedroom I'll do two walls at a time I'll run if I'm doing my trim run the the masking around two walls of the trim it paint it and then move on to the next two walls but now before it dries this is gonna pull off my masking and there I have it a laser straight line I'll give you a close-up look at that so there's a close-up look of my line on my baseboards right there and that's exactly how you get a perfectly straight line on your baseboards so once again just to go over just getting these laser straight lines you have a couple options you can use the frog tape that's the foolproof method frog tape and clear caulking the frog tape is extremely expensive it's typically over five dollars a roll this painters masking tape that we use right here is approximately a dollar roll the dollar cronic 20 a roll so it's gonna save you a lot of money we've had a lot of success actually just using this tape and clear caulking and pulling it off and having laser straight lines but if you want to guarantee yourself those straight lines on really rough surfaces the frog tape is even just a little bit more assurance but either way there's it's gonna give you a good straight line so there you have it how to caulk your tape or how to tape your caulk or you know whatever hope you guys learn how you can cut in a perfectly straight line with a copy caulking and saving that big you know if you've enjoyed this video give me a thumbs up subscribe to our channel hit the notification Bell bang bang and leave a comment down in the comment section below hopefully we'll see you on our next video

Channel: Paint Life TV

Views: 782,404

Keywords: caulking tape, caulking frogtape, painting straight lines, caulking tips, idaho painter caulking, how to caulk, idaho painter, caulking technique, frog tape, caulking your tape, painting tips, house painting tips, the idaho painter, painters tape, masking tape, house painting tips and tricks, house painting tips for beginners, painting hacks, paint life, renovation ideas, diy ideas, how to caulk tape, how to caulking method, does caulking tape work, paint life tv, diy

Id: xGfXN2YZm1o

Length: 47min 42sec (2862 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 19 2020