Tessa Meets the Corona Excalibur Brush

Posted on December 15, 2010August 6, 2019

This is Tessa. She looks cute, I’ll give her that. But behind those eyes lurks a bizarre sense of humor and a complete lack of fear and forethought.

See, a week and a half ago, she microwaved something for 30 minutes or more. The entire kitchen filled with black smoke and my wife and I spent nearly 5 hours (till 2:30 in the morning) scrubbing and cleaning and washing and airing out the home.

That was bad enough, but then last night, Tessa almost pushed things over the top. Almost. She was thwarted in her attempts because of a wise purchase I had made a few hours earlier.

Allow me to explain: A couple nights ago I started a paint project in our kitchen. I had finished most of the work on that first night and last night, I decided to finish up by painting some chalkboard paint on a small area on the wall so my wife could make notes, keep a small grocery list or whatever.

Anyway, that was last night’s project and before I left RepcoLite at the end of the day, I walked through the aisles picking up the supplies I was going to need. I grabbed some tape, a roller, some primer for another project and then, finally, I ended up in the brush aisle.

Now, you may remember another blog post where I wrote about a particular brush that I really love—the Chinex Excalibur brush from Corona. It’s a great brush—it cleans up easily, it applies paint beautifully and in every other way, it’s been the best brush I’ve ever owned. I’ve talked about it on the radio, I’ve written about it, and I’ve plugged it to our customers over and over and over again. I love it. Actually, I LOVED it.

See, about a month ago, I wrecked mine. I used it for polyurethane and forgot to clean it up. I found it a few days later, lying face down on my workbench. It was a terrible loss—an inglorious end for such a magnificent tool—and I’ve been mad at myself ever since.

Anyway, back to yesterday: I was walking through the aisles at RepcoLite and I came to the brushes. My first inclination—since I’m trying to watch what I spend—was to pick up the cheap brush for my paint job that night. I could get a $7 brush, get a couple uses out of it and toss it. I was just about to do that when I saw a new Chinex Excalibur brush on the shelf. That made me pause. I debated back and forth for a while and finally settled on the more expensive brush—exactly the same as the one I had wrecked a month or so ago.

I felt a little bad about spending the extra money . . . but before long I was at home working—applying my black chalkboard paint to the wall using my new brush.

Well, everything went well: I finished the project quickly and started to wash out my new brush and put my stuff away for the night. I had only run the brush under the tap for about 30 seconds when one of the kids hollered for my attention. When they didn’t quit, I quickly spun the brush in my hands to remove the excess water and I set it on the counter planning to come back later and rinse it a little better.

5 minutes later, after dealing with the kid who needed help, I came back to finish my brush cleaning job and discovered the brush was missing. I looked everywhere. It was nowhere to be found. So I did what I always do when I can’t find something: I called for the kids and asked who took it.

Well, it didn’t take long for Tessa (ahh, back to Tessa)—the one who microwaved our kitchen a couple nights ago—to come slinking out of the living room with my brush in her hands.

When she gave it to me, I asked her what she had been doing with it. She answered, as all kids everywhere answer: “nothing” and then she quickly tried to leave.

Well, something wasn’t quite right, so I pressed the issue: “were you brushing things in the living room?”

She looked down, up, sideways—everywhere except at me—and finally answered: “yes.”

Well, that made me nervous—she’d been brushing in the living room with a brush that I’d just had black paint in and which I had only rinsed out for a few seconds before putting down on the counter . . . and then I moved beyond nervous when a horrible thought hit me: we had just received new chairs from my inlaws. The only new things in our home right now. The only things that really could be damaged or wrecked by a little kid with a paint brush.

I gulped and asked the question I didn’t want to ask: “Did you brush the chairs?”

Tessa looked at me . . . debated . . . I could see the turmoil in her little crazy 5 year old kid eyes . . . and then she finally answered: “Well, Hannah told me to do it.”

Now, this is Hannah. She’s 3 years old. Would you listen to Hannah if she told you to do something? No. Nobody in their right mind would listen to Hannah on matters of grave importance. Why Tessa routinely chooses to listen to her is something that I cannot even begin to understand. However, at that particular moment, I wasn’t even thinking about it. I was thinking about all the different tricks I know to help me get black paint out of light fabric. That is, I was thinking about those things until I got to the chairs and noticed something amazing: they were completely clean.

Tessa even showed me where she brushed them. I turned on all the lights, examined them closely, and still . . . no paint. Not a smudge . . . not even a watered-down. gray streak. Nothing.

Well, naturally, I grabbed the brush and looked it over . . . and I realized how wise my purchase at RepcoLite earlier had been: the brush was perfectly—absolutely—clean.

I had only given it a quick, 30 second rinse in the sink. I had been pulled away from my task before I could adequately clean it. And yet, because of the special nature of the bristles used in this brush . . . that 30 seconds had been enough to rinse away every single last ounce of black paint. In fact, after just 30 seconds under running water this brush was clean enough to brush over brand new chairs and not leave a mark.

Now, I wouldn’t recommend trying that. In fact, I’ll never intentionally try it again . . . but I will, one more time, recommend the corona excalibur brush as THE best brush I’ve ever owned. Do yourself a favor . . . and pick one up. Drop the money just once and you’re not going to be sorry.

Must-Have Tools for Every Homeowner

Posted on November 16, 2010August 6, 2019

Many of the common home improvement jobs we run into during the course of owning a home are of the small variety: little touch-ups on our trim, patching some dinged-up drywall, and stuff like that.

In and of themselves, these jobs take 10 minutes here, 20 minutes there. But, unfortunately, many of these little jobs require some specific tools. If we don't have the right tools on hand, the tendency is to put the job off, to wait on it until we get the right supplies.

And when we do that, it doesn't take long for the jobs to pile up into mountains of work. Suddenly the 20 minute job is joined by 14 other 20 minute jobs and we find ourselves looking at hours and hours of work.

Having the right tools on hand means you can accomplish jobs quickly and easily. You can basically cross them off your "To-Do" list before you even put them on. And best of all, compiling this "emergency kit" of "Must-Have" tools should cost as little as $50.

Let's Get to the List:

THE CHINEX EXCALIBUR BRUSH from CORONA. OK, this is the one area where we'd recommend that you splurge a little. This brush from Corona is comprised of special filaments that are chemically engineered to release latex paints. This means a couple of things. First, the brush will apply latex paints remarkably well. Secondly (and more importantly, in my book), this means the brush will clean up easily. Literally, you can swirl this brush around in a bucket of water for about 30 seconds and then run it under a tap for 10-15 seconds more and it will be perfectly clean. That's why we recommend it for your "Emergency Kit". The ease with which it cleans up makes it less of a pain for you to switch colors and accomplish multiple little touch-ups quickly and easily.

PUTTY KNIVES. If you're going to stock up on a little bit of spackling compound, then you better get a few putty knives to go with it. Now, if you want some high-quality knives, you can buy them at RepcoLite for about $5.00 - $7.00 or so. But if you want something cheaper for your "Emergency Kit", look into the plastic knives we stock. Oh, they're not going to last forever, but if you're just filling a few holes or doing a little puttying, they'll be fine. You can purchase them in 1", 2" and 3" sizes--each one less than $1.00.

TAPE. Always have a roll of safe-release painter's blue tape from 3M around. Sure, you could purchase cheaper rolls of tape, but the safe-release tape is nice because it can be used on so many different surfaces. It's the only tape I know of that can perform well on walls, trim, freshly painted areas, and wallpaper. Regular tape is limited as to where it can be used, but the safe-release 3M tape can be used in almost any situation you encounter. And, as an added benefit, this tape offers remarkably crisp cut-in lines.

Sheep from Norway and Web-Based Color Tools

Posted on November 3, 2010August 6, 2019

“Attentive Sheep” by enki22 is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Sometimes, the most difficult part of the painting process is picking the right colors. After all, nobody wants to spend money and time on a project only to end up with colors they don’t like all over their walls. For that matter, nobody wants to spend time and money on a project only to end up with colors that they “like” on their walls. We want to go through the work of that painting process and end up with results we love.

And so, many would-be home re-decorators find themselves bogged down in the very first step of the painting process: color selection. Because really, it’s all about color. If you put the right combination of colors together, the project turns out great. Use the wrong colors and it’s not going to matter whether or not you used the highest quality paints, the best brushes and roller covers made from the wool of spotless sheep raised in the pristine, picturesque landscapes of Norway (or wherever). All the fancy tools and quality paints in the world can’t save you from a bad color combo.

Color’s critical to every paint project and finding your inspiration isn’t always easy. As a result, many people start a project expecting to make big changes in their home. By the end of the project, however, they find that they’ve fallen back into old standards they’ve become comfortable with. They know those color schemes worked in their home and they know they’re safe. But we also all know that “safe” isn’t always fun.

Finding new colors, new combinations, exciting themes seems tricky, but it doesn’t need to be. In fact, the internet is filled with great color tools that will help you visualize color combinations you may never have thought of before. These tools are designed for various purposes, but all of them can be used by the savvy home re-decorator to narrow down her colors, and, most importantly, to help her step outside of her standard color schemes.

Benjamin Moore’s Color Chooser

The first online tool I want to recommend to you is the Benjamin Moore Color Chooser. This is a standard tool designed specifically for selecting paint color combinations.

When you click the link, you’ll be taken to a page where you can create your own projects, store colors and do all kinds of other tasks. But the main thrust of the site is to allow you to pick from a variety of sample room photos and then fill in the walls, the trim, the ceilings with the Benjamin Moore Colors of your choice. You’ll be able to see how the colors interact with each other and you’ll get an idea about what certain color combos might look like in your home.

Spin the Color Wheel

Another great tool is called Spin the Color Wheel. And while it sounds like a game show, you’re not going to win any prizes here (except maybe a cool color scheme for your bathroom).

Spin the Color Wheel is actually a tool that’s designed to help web-designers find perfect color schemes for, well, websites. And it’s actually kind of fun. (Even without the prizes. Or Pat Sajak. Or the crowd chanting “Spin. The. Wheel!”)

You just go to the site and click the “Spin the Color Wheel” button on the right. When you do so, you’ll be presented with 3 random color samples. If you don’t like any of them, you can “spin again”. If you like one or two of them, you can press a little “hold” button. This will lock this color down so it doesn’t change with subsequent spins of the wheel.

After going through it a couple times, I found 3 or 4 color schemes that I thought were pretty interesting (one of which is displayed in the picture above). Oh, they may need a little tweaking here and there, but still . . . I went from having no idea what colors to choose or what would look good together to having 3 or 4 places to start from.

The Color Wizard

The Color Wizard is another web-designer tool. But, just like the Color Wheel one we just talked about, the Color Wizard can help you narrow down paint colors and discover new themes.

This one works based on some RED, GREEN and BLUE sliders. You just drag the sliders from left to right and your color samples change. Sounds pretty basic, right? Well, there’s an interesting twist to this site that makes it worth checking out: using a selection panel on the left of the color sample window, you can select different types of color schemes. You can select Complimentary Colors and the options you receive when you drag the sliders will represent complimentary colors on a color wheel. Or, you could select Analagous Colors and you’ll be presented with samples that are strictly analagous. It’s a great way to explore color, and, like the other tools I mentioned above, it’s a great way to jump start your creative mind and help you discover color schemes you may never have considered before.

All in All…

All in all, tools like these are great ways for nervous or newbie decorators to discover color schemes and open their eyes to the wide world of color. However, I’d recommend a couple cautions.

First, remember that the colors you see on your screen (especially when using the Benjamin Moore color chooser or any other paint-related color tool) are not necessarily accurate representations of the color in real life. Your monitor may show colors with a greener tint than they really have, or maybe a redder tone. In real life, when you see the chips you thought looked so good on the computer, you might find that they don’t look good at all.

But don’t despair! Use the color selection tools on the internet for a basis for color selection. If you saw a great tan, blue and green combination, but don’t like the color chips when you see them in real life, then find other chips that come close to the colors as you saw them on your monitor.

A second caution I’d urge is this: the web-designer tools are not going to present you with nice and tidy paint chip references. Instead, you’re going to get color names like “#FF7700” or the ever popular “#D1BEAD”. These are web colors and web-designers and other geeks know what they mean. If you go into a paint store with those numbers, you’re going to get a lot of blank stares. So, use those colors as starting points. Use them to figure out what colors you like to see together and then, when you go to the paint store, do your best to recreate what you found. Good luck, have fun . . . and most importantly, get painting!

Silicone Caulk: The Cheese Grater of the Home Improvement World

Posted on October 28, 2010August 6, 2019

OK, that title is convoluted at best. But it’s more attention-grabbing than the first title I tossed up there: Silicone Caulk–Use With CAUTION. Yeah, after typing that, I almost fell asleep. So I changed the title in the hopes of infusing it with energy and lively interest.

Anyway, if you read the earlier post about cheese graters, you’ll realize what I’m getting at here. If you missed the post about cheese graters . . . well, you need to check it out (here!).

The point of that post was to poke fun at myself and stress the point that there are certain items out there . . . in the wide, scary world . . . that look innocent, but can really screw up your day. Cheese graters and dental picks are just a couple.

Today, we’re shifting back into the world of home improvements and were going to talk, as the title suggests, about the Cheese Grater of the Home Improvement World: Silicone Caulk.

See, silicone caulk, if you’re not familiar with it, is a type of caulk that sticks tenaciously to almost any surface. It’s also extremely water resistant. Those two qualities make it tremendously useful . . . but also, “sneakily” dangerous.

Let me explain: silicone caulk is so resistant to almost everything, that nothing . . . NOTHING . . . will stick to it. It repels water, moisture, paint and even itself. And that’s where the danger lies.

Every now and then, folks pick up a tube of silicone caulk by accident at a home improvement warehouse. They just wander down an aisle, grab a tube and take it home. Then, they go ahead and do all their caulking. They caulk around their woodwork, around their windows, around their crown molding . . . they caulk everywhere.

And then, after all that work is done, they start painting. And that’s when they notice that the paint doesn’t seem to be sticking. At all. Wherever they applied their caulk, they discover the paint won’t adhere.

Now normally, when this happens, people are sad. They’re frustrated. They’re angry. But they’re usually not flipping out yet. And this is because they don’t understand the nature of silicone caulk. They figure they’ll just buy some new caulk–some paintable caulk–and they’ll put that over the silicone. Or, worst-case-scenario, they’ll prime all the silicone caulk with a special primer before they paint. Either way, they figure there’s a relatively simple solution.

But unfortunately, there’s not. As I mentioned earlier, nothing will stick to silicone caulk. I even used ALL CAPS to express that idea. Nothing will stick to silicone–not even silicone. And that means the only way to truly fix the problem is to remove the caulk. Completely.

Now, for some people, caulking and painting a room is bad enough. Not everybody wakes up every morning, just longing for another paint job to accomplish. But even if you like painting and caulking, nobody likes caulking, painting, discovering a problem, removing the caulk, scrubbing the walls, re-caulking and finally re-painting. That’s just no fun at all.

And that’s why I’m suggesting that silicone caulk needs to be used with caution. In the right situation, it can’t be beat. In a bathroom, between your tub surround and your tub, it’s ideal. But in an area where you plan to do some painting . . . avoid it like the plague.

Cheese Graters and Dental Picks

Posted on October 26, 2010August 6, 2019

There are some products or items that should only be used with extreme caution and with a full understanding of the ramifications.

Case in point: cheese graters. I’ve sliced up a finger and two knuckles just this past week alone. And really, honestly, that’s only half the inconvenience. The other half is trying to find all of the knuckle-skin I’ve shredded off without letting anybody else know what I’m doing.

You know how it goes: you’re standing in the kitchen, helping your wife make pizzas for the family on a Saturday night and you drag your knuckle over the cheese grater. Instantly, quickly and easily, a nice hunk of flesh is removed and deposited in the pile of grated cheese.

When that happens, you gasp, grab your bleeding knuckle and try to staunch the flow of blood. And while you’re doing that, your wife (who’s standing there rolling out the pizza dough), asks what happened.

You look at your hand, see the quarter-inch-sized patch of missing skin and then your eyes drift over the mounds and mounds of mozzarella cheese on the counter. And of course you say: “Oh, nothing.”

And then, you start sifting through the grated cheese–nonchalantly, trying to keep things on the low down–as you look for the part of you that the cheese grater lopped off.

But inevitably, when you start that, your wife clues in to what’s going on (you know how wives are–they have this sixth sense when it comes to hunks of skin being randomly shredded into the pizza cheese) and she says, “Oh, don’t tell me you lopped off another big hunk of skin into our cheese….”

And just the way she says it makes you feel stupid and disgusting–repulsive. It’s almost as if she thinks you did this on purpose. As if the sole purpose of helping grate the cheese is because you’re looking for your chance . . . your opportunity to grate your knuckles off into everybody’s pizza cheese. (I don’t know about you, but nothing sounds better to me on a Saturday night than a good movie and some “me time” spent resting, relaxing and grating thick layers of my knuckle-skin into the mozzarella cheese.)

Anyway, as I pointed out at the beginning, there are certain products, items or tools that should be used with extreme caution. One of these is the common cheese grater. Another of these items is the dental pick–you know, the little metal hook or scraper that dentists use to scrape plaque off your teeth? Yes. Those things. You need to exercise extreme caution when using those.

See, the other day, while wandering around Meijers, I discovered that you could purchase these tools for yourself: for $5 or so, you could buy a kit that came with a little handheld dentist mirror and two metal scraper/pick things. Well, naturally, I thought that was really cool–it’d be like being your own dentist–and so I bought a pack. After all, this $5 purchase could well save me hundreds of dollars down the road if I could pull it off.

Anyway, I bought a pack and spent the rest of the day thinking about them. When I arrived home that night, I grabbed my new purchase and made my way excitedly to the bathroom to begin doing dental work on myself.

I moved in front of the mirror, flicked on every light in the bathroom, opened my mouth wide and started poking around inside with the metal pick. It was an amazing experience. I felt important. I felt “dentisty”. And then, I felt pain.

See, I started scraping at what I thought might be plaque and the tool slipped. It bounced off my tooth and firmly embedded itself, point first, into my gum. Just below my tooth.

And of course, as I stood there with my hands in my mouth and my little hand-held dentist mirror trembling in my now shaky hands, trying to figure out how deeply the pick was imbedded in my now bleeding (profusely) gums, my wife started hammering on the door.

“What are you doing in there? Can I come in? What’s going on? Are you crying?” You know, all kinds of questions, fired at me machine-gun-style.

I just shouted “I’b fide. I’b nob do-id anydin. Bud dobe cub in . . . .”

In the end, the whole thing was just like being at the dentist: I was bleeding, my teeth and gums hurt, I was forced to talk with fingers and tools in my mouth . . . and when my wife walked in and saw what I was doing, she gave me the same look of pity mingled with disgust the dental assistants always give me when they tell me I should floss regularly.

So there you go: dental picks and cheese graters. Two tools or products you shouldn’t use without understanding the risk. Next time we’ll take this topic and apply it to home improvement stuff. We’ll talk about some commonly used items which commonly cause problems. And we’ll talk about how you can avoid those mistakes in your own home. Until then, leave the dentistry to the dentists and don’t eat pizza until you’ve given it a good once-over.

A Little Color Here, A Little Color There

Posted on October 21, 2010August 6, 2019

From afpinteriors.com

Many times, people think that in order to create a room with some “visual pop”, they’re going to need to pop open a gallon of Safety Orange paint and roll it all over their walls.

We tend to view that big transition from the world of “neutral” to the world of “color” as being . . . for lack of a better word . . . violent. And not everybody is up to the challenge. Not everybody has the intestinal fortitude to make such a bold shift. And so, as a result, there’s often a feeling of frustration that builds in the home decorator who’s trying to make the change.

There’s the desire to step out into the world of color, but there’s the fear they will go too far, lose control of the color and let it overpower their room.

And so, in the end, what often happens is this: the people on the verge . . . the ones who’d like to bring in color, but who are a little nervous, usually end up reverting to whatever was on their walls in the first place. Maybe they try for a darker tan than they had before, but typically, they stay in the same, safe color range. When the room is finished and the new paint is dry, they often feel a little sense of disappointment–it doesn’t look terribly different from the original. It’s safe. It feels boring and blank. And yet the alternative–walls splashed with Fuschia and Teal and Turquoise and Lime Green–seems too crazy, too schizophrenic. And so, they come to despise home decorating projects.

Well, if you’ve ever found yourself in that place–if you’ve ever wanted to step out boldly with color, but have been too nervous to try it . . . well, I’ve got good news: It can be remarkably easy and, most importantly, SAFE. All you need to do is this: bring your color in with accessories.

It’s a simple solution and it’s used by Designers and Professional Decorators all the time. It’s the ideal way for those just stepping into the world of color to get their feet wet. You simply find a nice, calm, reasonable, safe neutral tone for your walls and then spice it up with accessories.

Paint some of your boring picture frames bright pink and green. Maybe stripe a couple of them and mount them. Or maybe, take a look at your dresser. Maybe you don’t want to paint the whole thing, but what would happen if you painted two of the drawers? Or, what if you’d paint just the top?

Pick up some simple shelves and splash them with a bright color and you’ll be amazed how much character they display. These simple, boring, run-of-the-mill shelves suddenly look like designer pieces when we see them in a pink or a bright yellow.

And what about that boring lamp on the desk? What if you’d paint the base white or neutral and then pick up a bright lampshade? Or, reverse that: keep the lampshade white and simple and paint the base a bright color.

One of the most impressive uses of color in a small room that I’ve ever seen is pictured above. They made perfect use of this concept: the walls are a light, neutral green. They’re safe. Simple. Dangerously boring. But then, the designers added the dark brown bedspread and the brown picture frames. These constituted another earthy color, another safe choice, but they added to the overall effect.

The bench with the darker green stripes goes even farther towards adding some visual interest, but I think it’s easy to see that even then, the whole room has a very safe feel to it.

And then there’s the bed. The bright green on the bed suddenly gives the room a shot of life. It makes it vibrant, exciting . . . the kind of place you walk by and then walk back to so you can take a longer look.

And the reason it works so well is twofold: first, the green is so bright and bold that it instantly grabs your attention. Secondly (and more importantly), the green is in the last place we’d normally think to look. In a normal situation, the bed might be brown and the frames might be lime green along with the legs of the bench. And if that were the case, I don’t think the room would have it’s flair . . . it wouldn’t make the statement that it does here.

But instead of doing that, these designers “messed with” our expectations and, in so doing, by putting the color in the last place we’d expect to see it, they created something that really stands out. The color in the room isn’t overpowering, but the intelligent, controlled use of the bright green pumps vibrant life into the setting.

And that’s what I’m talking about. You don’t need to go crazy and cover your walls with circus colors in order to spruce up your rooms and infuse them with energy. You can do it through accessories, through the compelling choices of bright colors and interesting items, through the intelligent, well-thought out placement of these colors in areas we might not usually expect them. Remember, you don’t need a room full of color to make a statement. You just need the right colors in the right locations.