Masking as a Way of Life
As we get to the short strokes on our household projects (the doors, the laundry room and the deck), the final steps involve painting. In the laundry room its all about waterfall blue on the walls, contrasting the white cabinets and sparkly white quartz countertops. The cabinet and drawer handles are a matching waterfall blue in frosted sea glass that Kim found on Etsy, one of her favorite online shopping venues because it offers mostly handmade goods. Handy Brad spent perhaps an entire rain day last week masking every nook, cranny and fixture that was to be painted around. Handy Brad is very big on masking. He has been trained that masking and Re-masking is the only way to go when you paint. I left him to do as he pleased in the laundry room because it was not my project and I had no involvement. On the doors I watched both approaches being done and was much more heavily involved as it was both my project and I had a hand in every step of it. In fact, I did all the priming of the three doors and the gate, and I masked almost nothing on the theory that I would use touching-up as my method of exactness.
My method had three very specific tactics. I had a razor blade scraper, a set of smaller fine paint brushes (with attendant small containers of the Chinese Red door color and the beige stucco color), an a lighter fluid size can of something called Goof Off, which is specifically designed to remove paint. I also have acetone if I need to clean up an even bigger mess. The hardware and the aluminum thresholds, as well as all the glass in the two side doors got duly scrapped with the razor with a high degree of precision to be sure to get off every spec of paint. That was followed by a wiping with Goof Off to get any remnants of paint dust off. Quite frankly, it worked like a charm and was both quick and satisfying in its results. It kind of makes me wonder why one would want to mask those sorts of adjacent materials (meaning metal and glass). Strangely enough, because some of the hardware had already been masked by Gildardo, I found that my most meticulous effort was needed to use the fine paintbrushes to touch up where the masking had been overdone and left a few spots still lacking red paint. I found it harder to fill in for missed spots than to remove excess paint from spillover.
The hardest part of the touch-up was the edges of the molding where the wood meets the stucco. Stucco, by its very nature is rough and jagged. That means it does not lend itself well to being asked no matter how meticulous you are and how hard you press down and in on the stucco area to make an impenetrable seal. No matter what, you end up with areas where the paint bleeds into the nooks and crannies of the stucco and makes the interface look less than perfect. This is where the smaller, finer brushes come in handy. I went all out on Amazon for some reason and bought a set of eighteen brushes with varying size and shape. I saw it as the only way to make sense of the shipping charges and, quite honestly, I liked the zippered ballistic nylon carrying case they came in. It seemed less likely that they would get misplaced or lost in the fray if I had a case for them. So, I spent a day on the three doors alternating between red and beige paint to get the lines as straight and crisp as possible. This is the only way to do this from what I can tell since scraping and Goof Off are simply not possible on these types of surfaces.
This exercise in painting has made me think about the analogies in life that are represented by the issues of painting and masking. The first and obvious issue is the degree of care and patience that we each think is worthwhile in our endeavors. Some people are perfectionists that aren’t happy unless everything is perfect. Others are somewhat more pragmatic and feel that near-perfection is sufficient on the theory that a zero-defect system is never practical or achievable and that one must allow some tolerance or risk wasting great effort and money to achieve the impossible. Just thinking about the front door and moldings I want it to look neat and tidy (as opposed to messy and, as Dave likes to say, “ghetto”), but I believe that this is an outdoor-facing surface that is naturally exposed to the elements and therefore likely to get dinged and mildly worn right from the get-go. This says to me that near-perfect is good enough because it will never be perfect for long (if ever) anyway. We are all OK with ongoing repair approaches to our homes, so what is the difference if the first “repairs” are really just a series of touch-ups and detailing. In life we have generally come to appreciate shabby-chic, distressed and antiqued as a look. In fact, the hardware that I have bought is a distressed-looking pewter that everyone likes. I liked it enough that it guided me to have moldings for both sides and the top crafted to match. They do not look perfect, by design. QED (quo erat demonstrandum).
Masking is also about not completely believing in yourself, or more likely having had beaten into you that you are likely to fuck up so you need to head it off at the pass. Needless to say, i don’t believe in that kind of thinking and feel a more positive attitude is more constructive and that its worth the occasional fuck up that needs to get fixed to believe in yourself enough to take some risk. When it comes to painting the edges of these door frames against the stucco, I think it is far wise to use an edging brush and maybe even a straightedge guide if you want and freehanding that edge. My guess is that you end up with fewer bleed spots that need touch-up than if you use the best masking tape in the world and apply it with all the care in the world. That is my kind of risk-taking to be sure. I am lucky because my bohemian mother raised me with the joint expectation that it is, indeed, not a perfect world and making it better is good enough and the belief that taking risks and believing in yourself is an important element in high achievement. I understand why masking is a way of life for some, but I am just glad, once again, for being raised by a mother who saw the value in learning about fucking up and how to minimize it rather than how to get out ahead of it and avoid it.