5. Clean, Patch, Caulk

" Before you do any type of painting, before you even open that paint can, you gotta clean. You see the preparation is the key to success, and the paint is only as good as the surface you actually put it to. So, here's a couple of little secrets we're gonna use. You've got a bucket of water--"

" Right."

" and a little bit of dish soap, and a soft sponge. You're gonna actually clean the dry wall. But on woodwork, we have another little tip that I'm gonna give you, and that's using rubbing alcohol, about 70 proof. And this is a really simple way of cleaning your type of woodwork. And this will get all the grease. You can actually see, by taking this, it will actually take off all the--oh, any grease, grime, any of those kinds of things. And so we just want it very gently go over it. We can now clean, and you'll be absolutely stunned how much will come off on this. And it doesn't really dull the surface, and that's one of the real secrets about working around, is the preparation. Again, we said 80% is in the preparation, not the installation. One of the things we gonna do is we gotta spackle these holes."

" Uh hum."

" Okay?"

" Yeah."

" And--"

" There's a lot of them."

" why?"

" Because we messed up too many times when we were hanging up our pictures."

" I know."

" That's life."

" And that's one of the reasons we used a toothpick, `cause that's the one you wanna save."

" Right."

" And there's one below that we wanna go."

" A spackle is actually formulated, and there is a difference between a spackle and caulking. A spackle is lightweight. It is a synthetic, and what this is, is actually a very cool tool. It's called a Patch Stick and what it is, is like deodorant for the wall. You twist it and actually forces it up. It's very inexpensive, and what we're gonna do is come over here and just put in a little bit of spackle like that. Don't overfill too much. Now, here's the neat thing about this particular tool. It has its own scraper head built in; so you put your finger here; and then you just go along; and you just scrape down; and literally, in about 30 seconds, that will dry. So, here's your tool. Go at it!"

" Go on. So, here's my hole. I'm just gonna dab on some spackle and use my nifty little hand on it. Here we go!"

" As part of the whole secret of doing a good paint job, is getting the caulking right along your baseboards,--"

" Right."

" your mouldings, your doorways, and so forth and so on. I call this"

" Cheese Whiz"

" for the wall or caulking in a can. Now, what it is, is pressurized inside the vessel here. It has caulking and has this nice little pressure-actuated valve. And so what you'll do, you just come right along, like so, and it shoots the caulking right into the area that we wanna fill. Just very gently, there you go, right along. Beautiful! Ah! Well, you know, if you shoot out too much,"

" Yeah."

" Hello!"

" What do I do?"

" That's not really a problem. What you can do is just take your sponge, a soft sponge, and just work right over. Now, this is water-based, so we're gonna turn it around and just wipe off, and it gives us a nice glacé bead. Then, take a towel, one of our wipe towels, and just go right along like this. And you can see, you got a nice sharp bead. It's gonna dry, and this will take about 2 hours to really dry, and would be able to paint right up against it."

" Okay."