How to Paint a Door Jamb

Video Transcript

"Hello! My name's Grady Johnson and I'm a professional painter. And today I represent expertvillage.com. Okay, now we're going to talk a little bit about painting the interior door jambs. Now, when you're painting interior door jambs, the thing to remember is that you want to work with the tips of your brush. Don't worry about how big your brush is because that little tip on the end is the most important part. So if you've got a sharp brush that's got a good tip on it, it's going to be easier to work with. Now before I start painting, I've sanded everything down and I wipe it all down with my rag. Now, I like to go back over that even if I've already done it just to be absolutely sure all that dust is off. Now you're working with interior enamels. They're going to pick up dust real easy. So you want to wipe that all down, especially down around the bottoms. That's where a lot of that dirt hangs out. The reason we do this is you don't want to pick up any exterior dirt when we're pulling it up on it or it's going to go right on that wood and it's going to show. Now at the same time, I just used pieces of cardboards around the bottom. It's mostly just to catch any big drips that hit. Now I'm not over carpeted today. Carpet, I'd lay down a little drop cloth and then use my cardboards too, just to be extra sure. But on wood like this, if it hits it I can just wipe it up right away. So first thing you want to do is you want to get a load of paint and just like always tap that into the sides of your brush. Alright, so it's not dripping and then start with the exterior lip. Then, paint that lip on down and ease that into place. Now you may want to tape here. If you're not really good with a brush and you're going to have to cut a sharper line, you're going to want to use tape. When you use tape don't use that yellow masking tape. It sticks a little too good and it's going to pull your work up and leave marks. So use the blue masking tape. It's designed to be used by painters so that it won't leave a mark and then tape it off. But even if you do use tape be sure you cut it in like I'm describing right now so that you don't make a mess. That way you won't end up with a ragged line. So remember, throw out the line first. Then, take that line and work it on in. Now, the key when you're cutting this line is if it has to lap up at all, make it lap up on the wood part not on the wall and it will never show. Most people won't catch that. But you do want to go ahead and cut that in nice and smooth. Now I've decided to paint every thing in this track right here because I can see everything. I know eventually, when I paint the inside hallway it's going to have the same color and you want to paint the interior of it and then bring it on down. So go ahead and bring that on up. Do the top part first and really go ahead and coat it. Painting this, you want to be sure that it doesn't pick up any trash. Now sometimes it does and this is actually going to get a couple of coats. The thing to remember always is that whatever is going to be seen from this side, we want to paint this color. Now when you're painting this edge, you want to do something like this. You just feather it off. Now you see I got a little bit on there. That I don't want. So I'm going to wipe that off. I'm using my finger, but it's best to use a rag with that. I usually use a little bit of both and this way, I look like a painting genius because I keep my work clean. So we're going to continue to bring down that edge like this and then here we just square up that top. Now, when you're doing the top, you just square it along and roll it around the top so that it gets that top edge too. Don't get any on the wall. That's looking really good. Alright, I've just about got this one done. I'm going to get the other side. But these are all the tips that you need to remember when you're painting an interior door jamb. "