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Plan Taping and First Coat Application

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When to pull your TAPE? Painting on Tape and when to remove it!

What happens here

The presenter explains that for the first coat of paint, you should avoid painting directly on the tape, leaving a small gap (about 1/8 to 1/16 inch). This is particularly important for paints with a sheen (eggshell, satin, etc.) because their acrylic content makes them elastic. If paint dries on the tape with such paints, it will bridge and pull off paint from the wall, creating a "shark's teeth" effect upon removal. Flat paints are more forgiving due to less acrylic, but the method is still recommended. The video shows the wall already taped around a window and along the baseboard, with the first coat applied away from the tape.

Goal: Strategically tape edges and apply the first coat of paint to prevent bridging and ensure clean lines.

Tools and materials

  • PaintFor the first coat on the wall
  • Painter's Tape FrogTapeTo mask off areas not to be painted

What they say

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this chris idaho painter here on paint live tv this subject is about um painting on your tape and you really should not paint on your tape but you do have to paint on your tape eventually um or not if you're not using tape i guess it doesn't even apply but here here we are we've got a scenario right here and um at what point in time do you paint on your tape and to what point in time do you pull your tape so i've got this accent while we're working on i worked around this accent wall and i stayed away from my tape on my first coat um about an eighth of an inch a sixteenth of an inch because if you paint on your tape on your first coat and your paint's gonna eventually dry from your wall to your tape when you take and pull your tape off it's going to bridge from your tape to your wall and it's going to begin pulling it off your wall in what we call a shark's teeth and that applies to any type of paint that has any type of sheen to it now um painting on your tape with flat paints um one of the great things about flat paint is it doesn't have very much acrylic in it that's why it's flat so you don't get bridging or you're less likely it's rare to get bridging but paints uh from eggshell satin the higher the sheen the more acrylic in the paint the more stretch is going to be in the paint so when you begin pulling your masking it's going to begin pulling off the paint from your tape to your surface even if your surface is primed even if you've done everything right it's typically going to pull now with flat paints once again you can get away with this method because a lot of times the flat paint there's no stretch in it and it's going to crack right along that edge as you begin pulling it off this is a flat paint right here so i don't necessarily have to worry about it but in order to just resolve that whole situation we just stay away from our tape on our first coat on our second coat

Auto-generated from the video audio.