Efficient painting and decorating – 1
This is the first in series articles on Efficient painting and decorating. 
As far as I am concerned, quality comes before quantity and speed.
However, if you can program yourself to work as efficiently as possible, while maintaining the highest standards, you have arrived!
I believe that with the decorating kit, materials and knowledge at our disposal in this day and age, I don’t see too many excuses for slow production from skilled painters (correctly) hell bent on extensive preparation. Likewise, I see no excuse for the bitty slap-dash finishes turned out by many speedy site merchants. But tradition and inertia often get in the way of progress.
Mr Efficiency, Jack Pauhl has a great saying long the lines of – If it ain’t broke, break it. He tirelessly reviews, annotates and analyses what is going on on painting and decorating sites, trying to find ways to make things go better and smoother.
If you hang on to the old ways, and don’t look hard at yourself, and don’t try to really understand what you are doing & why, or if you don’t look outside the box for new ideas, things will never change for the better. And in the decorating trade, for the most part, things can only get better.
The array of materials, brushes, and equipment available now are very different from yesteryear. Not every new product on the market is brilliant, but many are – and all have room for improvement.
If you are interested in being more efficient without having to blow a couple of thousand on a monster spray rig, I am going to feature some examples of the pieces of kit and kaboodle that I think should be thought about long and hard.
(As an idea, much traditional kit and materials such as dusting brushes, white spirit, dust sheets, that have long been taken for granted should be binned, or at least put in a dark cupboard and only brought out on special occasions…. )
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4 comments to “Efficient painting and decorating – 1”
Hi
In the past I’ve been able to decorate at leisure. Now I need to decorate a whole house in pretty short order. I searched Google and came across this post. I can’t find other posts related to this subject although it looks like the first in a series, and the link to Jack Pauhl is dead. Is there anything else you have posted that is related please?
Thanks
Dan
Hi the other topics I covered in this section were dust sheets, white spirit, dusting brushes, step ladders. You can either google for a topic in the left sidebar which is pretty accurate, or go through the blog in the orange box half way down the left sidebar.
Following some roofing work I had a roll of roofing felt left, the modern felt that is a fabric with breathing properties whilst waterproof. I have found this to be ideal to use as a dustsheet whilst painting, it can be easily cut to size and tapes well, lies flat and soaks up paint splashes without bleeding through. After use it rolls or folds up ready for the next job. A 50 metre roll is not expensive providing a lot of cover.
That is a good tip. Any floor covering that can be re-used is a good candidate.