Make Painting Jobs A Snap With Paint Pads

As you browse through the aisles of your local hardware store, you’ve probably noticed something called a paint pad mixed in with the brushes and rollers. What are paint pads and why would you want to buy some? It is just a passing fad or a useful tool?

Paint pads are just that – pads that can hold paint. They're effective in all types of painting jobs - from cutting in on wall edges to getting a straight line near the ceiling. They're also very useful for painting an entire room in just a few hours; as opposed to days. I've been able to an entire bedroom with two coats of paint in about 6 hours.

Some people aren't happy using a paint pad as the only tool of choice so they tend to blend their painting work by using pads, rollers and brushes. Being honest that's how I do it myself - the pads are great but you will need at least one small and medium size brush to use in conjunction with them.

One of the big things I like about paint pads is that they cause far, far less mess than using rollers or even paint brushes. Because the paint is absorbed into the pad itself you don't have as much spillage as with other painting tools; that's my own experience at least.

A few tips for getting the most out of your paint pad tool:

* Always go in one direction, just as you would with a paint brush. This means that you shouldn’t slide the pad back and forth. Instead, slide it across the surface you are painting and then lift it up to place it beside the strip you just painted to resume painting. Sliding it back and forth makes the finished job look anything but smooth.

* Be careful when you are applying paint to the pad. The whole point of this tool is how easy it is to get right up to the edge of a wall without getting paint on the ceiling or trim. If you slop paint onto the edges or spacers, you’ve just lost the ability to do this.

* Clean the pad right away when you are done using it. To me, it seems a lot harder to get paint out of one of these when they are left to dry than a paintbrush. They aren’t super cheap, so I like to be sure I get more than one use out of them. However, if the paint does dry and you want to go ahead and just toss them, make sure you don’t throw out the handle, too. Most of these tools have replacement pads and buying them is cheaper than buying the whole thing.