How to Clean Paint Brushes

When you are painting your house, you need to use a number of brushes for painting the various portions of the house. These brushes have to be kept cleaned to ensure that they can be used again and again. If brushes are kept uncleaned then they turn hard and the bristles wear out eventually. Hence, care should be taken to keep the brushes free of colours and ready to be used.

Tips on how to clean brushes

• After you have finished brushing the paint on any surface, use a cloth or soft tissue to wipe off the excess paint. You can try out by gently squeezing the paint out with the pressure of your finger from the ferrule edge outwards. But do not pull on the bristles too much, since that will let out the thin fibres very easily.
• Then, rinse the brush in turpentine or oil or also in lukewarm water. But do avoid using too much of hot water.
• Mild soap can also be used for the brush. Dab a little bit of foam on the brush and rub it gently.
• Rinse a brush repeatedly in water so as to wash away the colour completely from it. Follow this process until the whole colour drains out of the brush and the water remains plain in colour even after rinsing the bristles in water.
• At the end, rinse the brush once more in fresh lukewarm water.
• Then use your finger tips to shape up the head of the bristles into a compact form.
• Leave the brush to dry up in room temperature. But make sure that you do not rest it on its head, since that can spoil the head of the bristles. The best trick is to stand it up on the handle.
• If you feel that the toxicity of the paint can damage the quality of your hand, then wear gloves whole you are painting.

Paints removed at different processes

Depending upon the kind of paint being used, different methods are used to remove it. For instance, for varnish, methalated spirit is best suggested. Petrol is best for rubber, amyl acetate for cellulose, paraffin or white spirit for Polyurethane. Washable distemper is best removed using weak solution of distemper. And oil is best removed with paraffin or white spirit. Once the whole chore of washing and drying is finished, tie up all the brushes together and keep them in a proper place.

Remember that painting your house is a very tedious job and demands loads of patience to accomplish the task with dexterity. So, if you are not cautious enough about the quality of the brush and its proper preservation, then you may have to fix a fat budget or brushes whenever your house needs painting.

The best way to check whether the brush you are using should not have any residual paint. At the end of the brush handle, there is a hole, pass a string through it and suspend the bristle in clean water. Then let the brush sit in water for long hours, eventually the brush will get cleaned and work almost as a new one.