DIY painting: How to clean up—without making a mess

There is almost no less sexy, less inspiring totally and complete thrill-kill than the words ‘clean up’, whether that’s part of your DIY painting, elementary school activity, or the dishes after dinner.

So we made a video about it.

Because there IS something less sexy than cleaning up a DIY painting mess: Cleaning up two of them.

It’s brought to you by our friends at HYDE tools, because sometimes you just gotta be real about DIY painting, drywall, and other jobs. So without further adieu, watch the video, read this blog, and save time.

Scrub-a-tub-tub. I’ve remodeled and repaired a zillion houses that don’t have utility sinks, including the one we’re remodeling now (had to take it out to renovate the space). I’ve used kitchen sinks, showers, bathtubs and the garden hose and I can say definitively say, given the choice, that the tub is the best, terrible place to clean up from all the stuff of DIY painting: Joint compound, spackle, caulk and paint.

The tub provides the volume of water needed to clean out a roller pan in my lifetime, for example. More importantly, there are no lunch dishes or coffee cups in there when I need it as is invariably the case with a kitchen sink. A kitchen sink is almost always too small too.

But—and this is a giant ‘but’—the tub needs to be protected or, see above, you’ll just make a secondary mess you then have to clean up. And it’s worse than the first mess.

My hack. My hack for preventing the double mess of settled out paint solids filling in the textured bottom of a tub or staining the sides, gobs of drying caulk, and clumps of joint compound everywhere—nevermind rust stains from roller pans and a place to spin brushes dry—is a simple vinyl shower pan liner. Get it in the Plumbing aisle at any big box store. It’s usually hanging on a roll and you buy as much as you want. About 5-feet is good. Cut it if it’s too long.

Anyway, the purpose it serves is to act as a barrier and ‘catch’ of sorts for the stuff that makes the secondary mess. Just drape it into the tub. Some duct tape can help hold it, but mostly its rigidity does the work.

It doesn’t catch everything, but it does a great job of catching most of it, especially if there are a few wrinkles in it. And does a superior job of protecting the surface from rust and knicks from metal tools.

Please let us know what you think. We—us and Hyde Tools—are here to make your DIY painting and everything else better.

Mark

A licensed contractor, tool expert, wood and outdoor enthusiast, and elite Spartan Race competitor, he writes about home improvement and tools for national magazines and websites, and teaches hands-on clinics for other remodeling professionals. Check out his book, The Carpenter's Notebook.

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