TOP TIPS! What are your top tips that you CAN share?

[Colour Republic]

Am i missing a trick here ?
I use easi fill and like it but cant do deep fills as it always slumps . read somewhere to use bonding plaster for deep then face fill with easifill!
Weeble

depends on how deep?

I find a lot of people sometimes mix easifil too watery as they are trying to prolong pot life but this is always a false economy as when it dries it shrinks back to much.

Easifill can be mixed to different consistency, like say for example when you are jointing, I normally mix up the first mix quite stiff so you can apply a decent amount to the joints without dragging to much off with the trowel, then the second fill I mix much looser so it feathers out at the edges and requires the lightest of sanding after

Deep holes are much the same; mix it up quite stiff so you don't get any slump then fine fill with a second coat an hour later with a thinner mix.

If it was the odd hole I may fill up to an inch with easifil but whilst it sets within an hour it won't dry enough to sand for up to 2 days. if there are a few then I would fill with bonding then face fill with easifil, this will still take up to a day to dry before you can sand and paint. Just depends on what else you've got to do on the job if you can fill the time (excuse the pun)

[splashofcolours]

Thats a problem ive never had before- not stiff enough!!
Im probably guilty off to weak a mix as ive mixed whipping cream consistency mainly for feathering - next time i will go for a stronger mix .
The deepest hole i would fill is prob about an 1" so will use bonding plaster first then facefill.
(this reads all wrong Im going)
Weeble

[Tom d'Angler]

Here's a tip - stand your paint tin / kettle on a sheet of sandpaper, grit side up.

The paper stops any runs that go down the side of the tin soaking into (and through!) your dust sheets.

When doing skirtings you can pull the piece of sandpaper towards you as you move along and the grit stops the tin / kettle sliding off the paper (if that makes sense).

[Colour Republic]

Do you use sheets of glass paper as opposed to rolls of aluminum oxide sand paper Tom?

[Tom d'Angler]

Do you use sheets of glass paper as opposed to rolls of aluminum oxide sand paper Tom?

For sanding, neither. I actually use those 3M type sanding blocks as I find them easier to get into and around curves on skirting, etc.

I've got loads of sheets of glass paper though because I bought a job lot before I discovered the foam sanding blocks.

[Puma]

Hey Carumba that must cost you a fortune Tom, Mirka Hiflex from Decorating Direct 50m of p60 50m of 150, is the sharpest you'll find and very cheap and a bit of the hiomat 240 should see you save a few quid every single day you decorate - lets say more than £600 a year then!

The Hiomat 240 isn't the sharpest, but that doesn't bother me at all for a 240, its sharp enough and v cheap.

[Colour Republic]

Tom those pads are great for keying up already great surfaces but really slow and hard work for anything else.

I know you like to use your local builders merchants for your suppliers but I really think you need to go a visit a dedicated decorators merchants every now and then so you can see what is around.

I know you've taken a bashing in the past about how you set yourself up, but this is kinda the reason people were saying you really need to work along side a time served pro for the first couple of years at least. If your finish ok then that's all good but you do seem to make life hard for yourself sometimes mate. You seem to have limited access to merchants and these are dictating the kind of products you use.

[Tom d'Angler]

Colour Republic, I take on board what you are saying. The pads I use seem to do a great job of keying the surfaces ready for painting. You are right - they aren't great for rough surfaces. For those I tend to use my electric sander. That makes life a lot easier!

I've been back to some of the jobs I did over three years ago and the paintwork still looks great so I guess what I am doing is working.

However, this week I'm working in a town where there is a Dulux Decorator Centre nearby and I had already planned to pop in there tomorrow afternoon to get a couple of new sash brushes (I used my best one when painting a window frame bright blue and not all the blue will come out, despite me cleaning the blooming thing for ages!) so I will have a butcher's at the sanding stuff. Mind you, I they don't convince me that what they have is far better or far easier to use than what I am doing already then I will stick with what I have got. Even some time served pros might be doing things the way they do because they've always done it that way, rather than move top a new way of doing things that might not have worked in days gone by but will now because of advances in materials and tools. I mean, I don;t know how long the Brushmate system has been around but I can imagine there were a lot of time served pros who laughed at the very thought of keeping wet brushes in a metal box for months on end.

Puma - I bought some sanding paper on a long roll a while ago and it was good. The sheets I got were going to be used to do some rough work at home in the garden but that project fell through. They were £1 a pack of ten sheets (!) so I bought ten packs. I found they weren't any good for use on customers' houses because the paper was too thin and tore far too easily so I chucked them in the back of the van and then used one under a dripping paint kettle, hence my tip.

Look, the long and the short of it as I see it is this ... we all have our own way of doing things. I am always willing to listen to advice and tips from people who have more experience than me. However, as long as what I am doing is producing the right result for the right price and my customers are happy with the work I have done and, more importantly, they either get me back to do more work or recommend me to their friends, then I am happy that I have done a good job and they have received value for money. I realise there are often better or faster ways of doing things but I also realise that sometimes the difference between using this tool or that tool is so minute that nobody would notice anyway.

[Puma]

Tom I know you do a good job; it's easy to detect that you have a careful approach, but if you say glass paper or sanding sponges it really rings alarm bells for a time served dec... Hey ho.

[Colour Republic]

The pads I use seem to do a great job of keying the surfaces ready for painting. You are right - they aren't great for rough surfaces. For those I tend to use my electric sander. That makes life a lot easier!

.

This is what i'm saying to you.

Go and buy the rolls of sandpaper Puma listed (Personally I go for 80/120/240 grits but that's up to preference) the prices for those rolls on that site are very good.

When using the paper cut a section of about 20cm+ then fold the paper in 3, it's hard to put in writing but you should end up two rough surfaces with two flaps that fold over one another, holding it all together. Now the rough surface means you can hold the paper on the end of your finger tips firmly, without it flying about or ripping.

You say you don't buy this paper but use a sander for anything tough, again this makes me think you are buying sanding pads for your sander, which can be expensive. The beauty of this type of sand paper is that it can be cut to size quickly to fit a palm sander. (I would recommend the makita palm sander about £60-70). Again saving you money, and the paper is tougher than most of the ready-made sanding pads sold.

I understand what you are saying about time served decorators who may be stuck in their ways but it is often the opposite. Once you have been in the construction industry long enough your brain tends to work in a different way, you use one product or a technique, something new comes along and you can quickly evaluate it to see if it sits right with the various problems that you know are chucked up on jobs, if it makes sense you try it.

Take that electric brush/roller spinner I know you use. Before those sort of products came out, decorators would take a brush and place it between the palms of their hands and rub back a forth to spin the brush and dry it. Rollers where cleaned out, put back in a cage and rolled down a clean wall to spin dry. Now before that electric spinner came out there is a mechanical version which doesn't require the use of a drill or electricity but works by pump action, these are of course slightly quicker to use as there is no set up. They are cheaper and made of metal not plastic so a bit more robust. You have the electric one whch is fine and does the same job but if it ever broke I would say get the mechanical one instead.

In construction there are problems and solutions, depending on how long you have been in the industry will determine the speed at which your brain will come up with the solution. It's called experience. All i'm trying to say is that had you worked with a decorator in the begining you would have had a massive head start on your education in the industry, I'll go as a fair as saying a decent decorator could have shown and taught you more in a month than you learnt in your first 2 years going it alone.

I'm not having a dig, i'm just trying to help you from working in ineffective ways and stop you from having to learn things the hard way.

[Tom d'Angler]

Here, guess what ... I went into the DDC today, bought some new sash brushes and a arsehole of coverstain ... and forgot to ask them about the sanding paper - hahaha! I'm over that way again next week and I've written it down on my list so this time I will remember to ask them

I guess until I try sanding using a different method I won't know if it works better for me than my current method, so I will give it a go.

Colour Republic, thanks for your comments. I know you're not having a dig but I was just trying to point out that some, and I'm not including you in this, "time served" decorators are blinkered into thinking the way they do things is the only way because that is the way they have always done it. I also appreciate that had I done some sort of apprenticeship I would have learned a lot more in a shorter period of time than I have so far since working full time as a decorator. However, when I started I needed to pay the mortgage and put food on the table so I learned as I earned. I couldn't have afforded to have gone on a training course or worked as a (relatively) cheap apprentice-cum-labourer. If I am honest, I initially saw decorating as a way to earn some money quickly. I only intended to do it for a few months until something "better" came along. Now, three and a third years later, I have a new career that not only earns me a very good living but also gives me (and my customers, I hope) a great deal of satisfaction.

Now I can't see myself doing anything else! It's weird how life turns out.

[splashofcolours]

Silicone carbide , aluminuim oxide, glass paper, sanders, folding 3 ways , cork block, sanding block. STOP STOP STOP

Ive just come in made a cuppa and thought i would have a catch up, and the first thing i read is all above.

Ive just spend 9 hrs wet n drying, sugar soap, dry and prime /UC 11 doors, both sides and frames + skirts so tell me about it.
and got the lot to gloss tom

From my point I can see both sides of the above comments, As im 46 and always done my own decorating and familys I learnt as i was going, then when i had that life changing moment ( the ex fecked off ) I decided to pack in my job as an IFA and put myself through college. I was very lucky as i worked 2 jobs to cover myself and had a fantastic college tutor (Janice) who helped me massive. I can say i totally changed my way of working once i knew how it should be done so can see where CR is comming from.
Now where i do have a weakness is Ive never worked on site,- only domestic and commerical but thats fine by me, and know i would struggle to make time as some pros do. I take the do it as i was shown approach and it works , but even on here i still have picked up some cracking tips and info.
So in conclusion - your NEVER to old to learn.
Weeble

[Colour Republic]

Believe me not having worked on site is a strength not a weakness in most cases!!

[splashofcolours]

CR-
Was kind of thinking that but certainly do not want to dish those that do. Ive got my cards but never tried it.

[Tom d'Angler]

a fantastic college tutor (Janice) who helped me massive.

I bet she did!