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Expertise
5 October 2023
After discovering some dry rot in the palace's trim, we dug it out, patched it and painted it yesterday. Then we confronted the impossible. How to reclose the paint can?
Paint Can. Olympus E-PL1 with 14-42mm II R kit lens at 32mm (64mm equivalent), f6.3, 1/10 second and ISO 1600. Processed in Adobe Camera Raw.
We've seen professional house painters do it. They start with a new gallon bucket of paint and when they're done, they slap the lid back on and give it a slap. And that seems to work. Until we come along.
But in the YouTube era, we research solutions. So we looked for some advice about getting an air tight fit so the paint won't dry out.
The one we adopted (for old paint battered cans) is to take a sheet of cling film (Saran Wrap to name names), lay it over the opening and slap the top back on, banging it closed with a hammer tapping through a piece of 1x6 wood that protects the malleable lid.
That approach has the aura of expertise.
But, we suspect, it's the sign of an amateur. We've never seen a professional painter with a roll of Saran Wrap in the truck.
No, instead, they use a small trick we'd missed in our observation of their method.
They paint the rim of can in one stroke.
When they drop the lid back on and tap it down, the fresh paint seals the opening. Not so tight you can't pop it open with a flathead screwdriver but air tight.
Now that is expertise.