PERFECT lines with caulking and tape.

Bam. So, here we are. We're going to talk about our cocking and tape method of getting perfectly straight lines, how we go about doing it, and try to answer some of the mysteries and some of the questions about this method that we keep getting. So, we got a reference that we could just tell people to go to here online. And boy, do we get questions, a whole lot, lots of questions. Um, one is the tape we use. We use Frog Tape and we use 3M 2020 tape. When do we use these two tapes, John? So, typically what we'll tell our guys is default to the 2020 tape, but we'll use Frog Tape anytime 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, we'll use Frog Tape cuz the adhesive is a little bit gentler. Or anytime we're working on something that's metal or like a uh like a stained 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 our production tape. It's only about a buck 20 a roll. This some I think we pay maybe like $4 or $5 a roll for this. Yeah. And um this has like this magic pixie dust on it that is on the the outside edges of the tape. Super cool. That swells and it keeps um paint or it keeps the cocking from bleeding underneath. So this is an amazing tape. It's really good for smooth surfaces like glass and stuff. Then we use two different types of coauling. And one of the cockings is a clear cocking and one is a white cocking. And clear cocking the clear a lot of people or we are getting people from other parts of the world that say that they um didn't even know clear cocking exists or they can't even get it. You don't have to use clear cocking. Um but there are some situations when it is highly recommended and that's on like going over stained wood. Yeah. Something like uh what what would you think? Uh anytime. So, we'll use clear anytime when the trim 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 trim 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 caulking. And so, and a lot of people get confused when we're using clear caulking cuz it comes out white but dries clear. And so again, magic and it's it's amazing all these magic things that these um painting companies come up with. But it it's you'll see it. We'll be wiping it and it's going to be uh 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? Clear versus white. The white cocking is a lot thicker. And there's a reason why we like a thicker cocking. John, what is that? It builds. it lasts uh 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 in it. It's mostly acrylic. It it dries that clear but it shrinks quite a bit. And that's where you might run into some problems with any gap. 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 wood. Yep. So eventually when the coauling and the paint dries, it's going to um the clear is going to 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 be is to me the shrink ability of it. It shrinks a lot. So um we're going to walk you through some of the processes and how we go about doing it and we're going to show you. We do get a lot of questions people be asking us, you know, when do we do that method and we use it. We got right here situations. We got a door jam and we got baseboards in these walls, but we've already done the walls. And some people are going to have a question, well, why aren't we doing that first? Why are we doing it last? And there's a lot of different um I guess scenarios, what we would call it, why we do what we do. And when we walk into each house, the majority of the time, you know, we're going to do it one way, but there are going to be certain situations where we would change our method. And this would be one. And we have a light color. And explain John with the light color and why we're not concerned about maybe like haloing and stuff like that. Yeah. So, typically two things we've got going for us. One, we're using a product that's self-leveling and so it 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. Uh, two, 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 um blacks, blues, greens, reds, things that aren't really natural uh pigments and 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 cutins 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. And 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 rolling, which is great because we had sprayed the trim. 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. Yep. So this paint that we use in the product is and the color is very forgiving. So we can roll these walls. We rolled these walls yesterday. We can come back and do these cutins and you're not going to 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 going to be working from room to room. But it you just got to take each situation and evaluate the situation and to determine, you know, what you're going to do when. But when it comes to the cocking and how we go about cocking and um getting straight lines with the tape and cocking, that typically is a straightforward process that we 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 cough. Why do you wear those gloves? Well, I like having soft hands for one, but really it comes down to I 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 going to dry them out. Then they're going to 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 them. And you know, we buy ours from Costco. They're super super cheap if you pick them up at 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 10 of them a day. These things are are pennies. I like using like gloves like these on the exterior of the house. I 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 going to work. And I'll either use bare hands or I'll use gloves. But bare if you're using your bare hands, you got to uh read the ingredients on cocking. And if you're concerned about absorbing those chemicals to your skin, you probably should use some gloves. And they're going to keep your hands cleaner, just like John said. Uh so let's see. Anything else we can talk about the cocking 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, 5 6,000 ft. We've been working on it. Now, this is the fifth day we're going to be done, but we're using uh the 3M20 tape, um 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 jam right here and some baseboards. And I'm going to just this right here. And I'm just going to put a little small bead cuz the bead of cocking itself, you're really just wiping it all off. So, you're not trying to put a whole lot of cocking on. The more caulking you put on on, the more you're gonna have to wipe off. So, I'm just gonna put a little tiny bead on this cocking or on this tape right here. And I don't want to get too far ahead of myself cuz the cocking dries pretty fast. So, I'm going to do, you know, short runs, short sections. I got a little bead of cocking there. Now, I'm just going to begin wiping it off. And one of the nice things about us putting this 9-in paper down, I can just wipe the excess cocking on the paper right here. here. So, I'm just going to keep, you know, wiping it clean here. So, I don't want a whole lot of cocking built up on there. I'm trying to wipe the majority of it off cuz if when you peel your tape, if you have a lot of cocking on there, it's going to create what we call a big dam and it's going to have this nice big ridge on there. That doesn't look so good. And then I'm going to after I put the cocking on, I don't want to wait a whole long time because the cocking does dry fairly fast. Now I'm going to paint over the top of the cocking. And I don't want to push too hard cuz if I push really hard, I'm forcing the cocking underneath the tape. I just want to just, you know, 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 going to continue working up this door door jam. And then once I get done, I'm going to just pull this section of tape off. And we do get people asking us, you know, all the time, do we pull it when it's wet or dry? You don't want the cocking to dry. And you don't want the paint to dry. You want to pull it off flat. If you wait till it dries, either one of them dry, it skims over. What's going to happen is the dried paint or the dried cocking, it's going to bridge the gap between the tape and the wall, and you're going to pull it and it's probably going to peel the tape off the wall. So now I'm going to begin just peeling my tape off. And if you go too fast, you know, if uh I want to just go a nice, you know, even steady speed. If you go too fast, it's going to flick paint off and what we call kind of the it look like spiders and flicks and it'll get on your trim. So, I'm just going to 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. Um, on this this uh 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 leaked through that tape or pores. And then again, right here, we've got wood where we're going to put that clear caulking in there. It's going to seal that line up and then when it dries, you won't see, like Chris had referred to earlier, that dam show up being white. It'll dry out clear. And so all you'll see is the gray color and then the wood. So here we go. And the clear caulking is a lot thinner and goes a lot further. So, usually I'll do about 60% of what I need to caulk and I'll drag all that excess on down. Then fill in as needed. And 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 We'll cover over the stippling with our 4-in roller. And you don't want that roller to hit the edge of the tape or it's going to dig that caulk in. We'll pull off. And then like Chris said, you want to go slowly. And then we always pull towards where we're going instead of away. And that also is going to help that paint and caulking from not flipping back. We're going to be left with a nice crisp straight line. So, here's another situation I'm going to show you right here. I'm going to be cocking this baseboard right here. There was a little crack 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 uh cracks or gaps exposed. That way, your caulking will fill that and it won't be shown anymore. You probably won't be able to see it on video, but there's you a little crack right here and whoever did the insulation of the tape just left it exposed. I'm going to put a bead of cocking right here. Just wrap it around this corner. Once again, I'm using white cocking right here. Just going to wipe this off. And in this situation, you can see we haven't rolled the walls yet. And in this method, you can't let your paint or cocking dry. So, I'm going to be putting the paint and cocking on right here. And then I'm going to be rolling over it get to get the stippling to match the stippling that will go here. But when I pull this, you're probably going to 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 we'll 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 going to put that on. And then I'm going to peel the tape off slowly. And there you have it. And occasionally, you're going to run into a situation where maybe the the tape wasn't down uh correctly or came up. In that that situation right there, if I would have ran over my finger the tape before I installed the cocking, it would have 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 caulking or that tape isn't tight against the wall, but you actually want to leave about an eighth of an inch of space from the wall 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 going to 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 two, 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, too, which is always a nice look. We'll run our bead of coffee 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 gummies of caulking, dried caulking, because it's what's left on your finger, you're not going to have that nice smooth radius. You're going to have kind of a gummy chunky looking radius. And like Chris said, you want to roll or you want caulk 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 going to end up not with laser sharp lines, but with lines that um look like they've all been pulled apart and they're half dry. Once again, immediately after that's done, we will pull it pull the tape up. Try to pull it up towards where you're going. and 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 cocking. So, clear cocking on anything like stained wood, uh, cabinets, and anything that's not white. Use white coaulking is it's thicker. And use it over any type of white trim or anything. Any other pointers you got? Yeah, frog tape or 2020. So, the type of tape will will matter on what you're taping onto. And then 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 is going to do because you're going to run up that materials bill pretty fast. Always pull your tape off before your paint and cocking dries. Mhm. Or you're going to have some problems. Yeah. And then make sure you've got enough space away from the wall so that you can get that nice crisp clean line. And when you apply when you do your cutins, there's a lot of situations, you know, that vary when it comes to that. You're not always going to do at the same time. You could roll your first coat and then do your cutins. You could roll your second coat and do your cutins. Or you can do your cocking and taping method before you roll your walls. And we do get a lot of of comments back from people who say, "Well, hey, a real painter should be able to cut a 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. One of the benefits of this process, though, is this helps us get brand new guys, helpers, and apprentices to be more productive on the job site and have cleaner lines sooner than we would if they had to spend years working on getting those clean lines. Now, I can have a guy who's been with us for 2 months, never picked up a paintbrush before that. We work on masking a nice straight line. They mask the line. They cough. They pull it right away. And now they're able to produce at a higher level for us than they would freehand.