Dirty Little Secrets

Every home owner has corners that they cut, and things they hide and hope no one ever notices. Whether it be hanging curtains off center to make that window look like it's in the right place, or hanging a picture over that hole in your wall where you lost control of a hammer. Today, I have one of my dirty little painting secrets.

I don't wash my paintbrushes. 

Okay, that sounds worse than it really is. I do wash them...eventually. But if I plan on coming back to a project in a few hours (okay...realistically....a few days) I don't really feel like washing out my brushes. So, what do I do to keep my paintbrush bills under control? Aluminum foil.

Like I said a few posts ago, painting the wood trim in our house is a laborious process that takes several coats. I, personally, hate washing a brush only to come back to it a few hours later to add that second or third coat of paint and find it's still wet with water and I'm going to have to get out a new brush. So, between coats, I wrap my brushes in aluminum foil. 

This wouldn't be such a dirty little secret if I washed my brushes at the end of the day and let them dry overnight. But it's not unusual to for me to leave a brush in foil for up to a week. It's happened to me on more than one occasion that I go to open the foil and find that the brush has dried inside and is useless.

So, now you know. Hello, my name is Molly and I don't take care of my paintbrushes.

In other news I hope to be revealing the newly painted guest bedroom in a few days and the new plans for our dining room rug (rug hint: I'm bad at math).