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Paintbrush garage

Real painters clean their brushes every day. I am not a real painter. But I often seal end-grain cuts and back-prime siding and exterior trim with an oil-based primer. To save cleanup time at the end of the day, I keep my brush in the rig shown in the drawing.

My brush garage consists of a 1-gal. paint pail, a 1x4 crossbar nailed to a doughnut-shaped plywood base, and a 5-gal. drywall bucket with a lid. To use it, I put several inches of paint thinner in the paint pail and suspend the brush from the nail hanger so that the bristles are immersed in the thinner. Then I cover the drywall bucket to keep the thinner from evaporating.

This setup allows me to go weeks between cleaning my brush. And at the end of a long day of running siding and trim, it sure is nice not to have to deal with paint-thinner fumes and drips.


John Carroll, Durham, NC
From Fine Homebuilding 120, pp. 32 January 1, 1999

Related Topics:
Exterior Painting and Finishing | Painting Tools | Cleaning | Maintenance and Repair | Painting and Finishing | Other Hand Tools
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