10 DIY Painting Tools and Gadgets For Homeowners
It’s natural to spend more time thinking about that perfect shade of paint, than the tools you’ll need to apply it. Yet these gadgets can make your DIY project look as if you’d hired a professional team.
1. Glass mask
“Glass mask” products allow you to roll an ointment-like protective film over windows, mirrors and glass-paneled furniture before you begin painting nearby surfaces. The cap even contains the perfect scraper for easy removal of the dried “mask” when your paint job is done.
2. Hinge Covers
Hinge covers help you paint and stain doors and trim without messing up the hinges. The peel-and-stick products are available in the most common hinge sizes, and come several to a pack.
3. Edge Painter
This small tool allows you to paint around windows and doors with much more precision than even the smallest paintbrush allows. Just dip one end into your paint can for the tool to “suck up” the paint, then begin applying paint via the angled pad on the other end.
4. Paint Guard
Paint guards shield window trim, baseboards and other surfaces adjacent to what you’re touching up. The simple straight-edged tool, with an easy-grip handle, acts as a boundary that your brush won’t cross.
5. Folding bench
For those hard-to-reach jobs that don’t require tall ladders, turn to inexpensive folding benches. These aluminum wonders are sturdier than plastic kitchen step stools, with folding legs for hanging on your tool wall or for storing under a bed.
6. Paint Pail
These lightweight buckets save you from continually returning to a paint can or roller tray as you’re working. The sturdy plastic pails come equipped with comfortable side handles which you grip with one hand while painting with the other. They also come in a range of models, from pails with attached grids for easy removal of excess paint from your roller, to more basic pail-andbrush systems.
7. Painting “Sticks”
These days, extendable paint gadgets have ergonomic handles. They also boast telescoping poles that let you adjust the length, then lock it into position.
8. Nifty Eyewear
Before painting, invest in the kind of painting goggles which allow you to simply turn a knob when paint begins to splatter onto their rectangular surface. The knob brings up a clean, paint-free viewing screen.
9. Corner Roller
This tool allows you to press its soft, narrow wheel directly into the corner, so the intersection of two walls blend seamlessly with the rest of the painted room.
10. Tungsten Paint Scrapers
Paint scraping tools are nothing new, but the latest generation of scrapers have state-of-the-art blades that make prepping old walls for new paint a snap.
