Fastest Way to Mask Windows for Painting | Pro Tips from The Idaho Painter

Hey, this is Chris the Idaho Painter. Hopefully you enjoyed this video. This is one of many videos out of my new construction course. Everything you need to know about a painting a new construction interior. If you want to see that course, it's over and available at paintlifeupply.com. Hopefully enjoy this video. We've got a lot more that you can see later on. All right, up here we're going to give you a look at masking a window. So, this is what quite a few of the windows look like, you know, in this new construction house. Uh there's nothing right here but um a 2x6 and um cut drywall cuz there's going to be a wood window sill put on there. So we've got a drywall uh three-sided. I'm going to be masking. I always take and puts you know 1 in on my hand masker cuz it releases a lot easier when you're pulling it off versus inch and a half. I got my tough gaff with me cuz this is what I tack the sides with and mask the sides and bottom with using frog tape. uh blue. This is um their blue painters tape right here. 14-day release, you know, because um the the tape's going to stay on here sometimes multiple days. And so, you don't want to use a production tape on here if you're going to be leaving, you know, the tape on there, especially if it's going to be on there for more than 3 days. Frog tape, orange, you know, their ProGrade production tape that's got a 3-day release. And if it's going to be on there for more to me more than a day, I typically am going to be going with blue as my um tape to mask windows off. So this how it's done. M3000 hand masker. Just going to get it up here. Pull it out. Get it about a/ inch from the window right there. I'm just going to tack it up. I'm trying to leave some of my caulking exposed. Caulking should always be painted. Otherwise, it's going to collect dust and dirt over time. When I get close to the end, I'm kind of going to estimate where I need to tear it and then tear it off, put my masker either in my back pocket or on my ladder. Going to run finger across it to get it to hold stick, get a good seal. Going to pull the sides down. While I'm on my ladder, I'm going to take and tack my sides. I'm gonna bring it down tight. Tack one side. I'm going to bring it down tight on the other side. Get off my ladder. Now I'm going to tack this side. Going to try to take a sharp point of my tape right here. Stick it up in the corner. Make a nice corner. Come down the sides. Press it down. If I don't have a straight edge, tear another piece off right here. Get a nice corner. Just like that. The windows long enough. You got to move your ladder. I'm going to move it. Get my sharp corner up and to the corner. Bring it back down to where I tacked it. If it runs up onto the drywall, I just pull it away. Tear another sharp corner. Stick it up in there. Make sure I have a nice corner. Brush my sides down. Make sure I got a good seal on the edge. And the plastic. Going to pull my plastic all the way down [Music] like this. Now I'm going to begin masking down the side. If I need to get it, pull it over so I get a good seal. Go all the way down the window. Little bit extra onto the wood. All the way down. If you don't get a a good clean line, just take your masking, pull a little bit more, straighten that line up. Make sure you got a good seal. say, I can see right here, I don't have a good seal. If it's not sealed, you got any holes, I'm just going to go back and just put an extra piece on there and seal that. The last thing you want to do is get overspray on your windows. I'm going to roll this up to where I get my clean wood exposed cuz when I'm spraying this, I don't want this flipping up and overspray getting on my windows. I'm going to tack this down all the way across here. Make sure my corners are all tight. Run my masking down. Just got a splinter like that's why I wear gloves except when I mask. So, there we go. We've got my window pulled tight. Make sure you know nothing, no leaks. You know, if there was a hole or something from your masker right there, the blade put a little hole right there that could cause a leak. All this is sealed good. There we go. We got nice sharp corners. Our window is all masked. [Music] So, when masking, there's a couple options. You know, you could tear your tape, you know, to get um sharp corners or just take a longer piece of tape, run it over, you know, where you're going to be masking so it extends beyond like that. And then I'll just trim it with my knife. So, I just overrun it just like this. Then, I'm going to get my two-edge knife out and I'm going to trim that corner real quick. to be straight. Just like that. Take my knife. Make sure you got a nice sharp blade starting the day so you can cut your tape. Just like that. So, these are full wrap windows here. They don't have window sill on them. Sometimes they're full wrap drywall, not full wrap trim. So, I've got to mask off the whole binder window. So, I tore my mask in a little bit too far. I'm going to flip it, fold it, tack it like that. It's okay if you pull it too far. kind of in a difficult situation with this stairwell here. Hard to work with angle my ladder and everything. So, so you have a couple options. You could actually, you know, trim all this excess off or just roll it up. If you trim it, then you kind of got plastic floating, you know, all over the place. So, I like to just roll it up.