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Tips & Techniques

Painting Next to Carpet

A careful masking tape placement can help when painting near carpet.

Issue 153
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Edited and illustrated by Charles Miller

Painting baseboards next to carpets can be frustrating. Loose fibers at the edge of the carpet interfere with the brush, and any excess paint on either the baseboard or the carpet is hard to remove without making a mess. The drawing shows how I deal with the situation.

I use 2-in. wide masking tape to protect the carpet and to hold the carpet tufts away from the baseboard so that the paint can be applied below the top of the carpet line. For this purpose, Scotch-brand Long-Mask Masking Tape seems to work well. It has just the right amount of stickiness to adhere to the carpet, but does not stick strongly to the baseboard.

The tricky part is putting down the tape. First, I lay the tape so that it runs about 3/8 in. up the baseboard (figure 1). I take care not to press the tape against the baseboard because I don’t want it to stick there. Next, I press the tape onto the carpet about 1 in. away from the baseboard, and I use a putty knife to work the folded side of the tape into the corner where the carpet and baseboard meet (figure 2).

This makes the tape stick to all the tufts right up to the edge of the baseboard. Now when I tug the tape toward the middle of the room, the attached  carpet tufts are pulled away from the baseboard, and the baseboard side of the tape can be worked down (figure 3). This wraps the edge of the carpet and protects it from the paint that will be applied.

Pulling the tape more from the room edge exposes more of the baseboard for painting, and then pressing the room edge of the tape to the top of the carpet attaches the tape so that the gap between the carpet and baseboard remains held open (figure 4). A final inspection reveals missed carpet tufts in the gap, which can be corrected with a second layer of tape, using the same technique.

— Al Lemke; Hopewell Junction, NY

From Fine Homebuilding #153

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View Comments

  1. TTTTT | Feb 26, 2017 06:07pm | #1

    Once again, Figures 3 and 4 are missing.
    What is the problem?

  2. Ladella | Feb 26, 2017 07:13pm | #2

    Dear Folks at Fine Homebuilding:

    As above, the lack of care in posting and checking these How-To articles is a waste of time. Please comment here if anyone at Fine Homebuilding ever checks what is posted.

    Please stop posting until the entire how-to, with all graphics, is checked and corrected if an error is found.

  3. ItsMe2 | Feb 26, 2017 08:41pm | #3

    recycled tips (date in url)

    It sure looks like no one from Fine Home Building reads the comments.

  4. t01100879 | Feb 26, 2017 09:10pm | #4

    This is symptomatic of what's happening with all the Taunton website products. They are going downhill because they are cookie-cutter, automated content. The email newsletters are lower quality, customer service is lower quality, and email advertising is constantly in your face. Thankfully, the magazines are still quality productions.

  5. Ronald Schwalbe | Feb 26, 2017 09:49pm | #5

    AGAIN --Images missing - Evidently, NO ONE at FHB cares anymore - so - Now--neither do I
    Shame--you USED to be a fine publication

  6. CivilEng43 | Feb 27, 2017 03:49am | #6

    Missing figures tells me serious editing is also missing.

    My gripes with the Fine Home Building website concern lack of care when posting images and lousy or complete lack of editing.

    Images Posted:
    The images posted with many reader projects are displayed much too small. If FH receives images that are too small to post at a useful size, why don't they just ask the contributor to submit larger images or just flat turn down projects that are submitted with images that are too small?

    Editing (or lack thereof):
    Sometime last year a real estate developer/"builder" submitted a bunch of McMansions as reader projects. I submitted some cynical comments. All this stayed posted under Reader Projects for months and months. I noticed in January that FH had finally deleted these so called Reader Projects. It was like the editor in charge of Reader Projects had quit or been fired and it took them months and months to hire a replacement.

    Some of the reader projects that I have submitted were never published or have been removed. FH certainly has a right (and duty) to decide what is worthwhile publishing, but I just can't imagine what can be less worthwhile publishing than cookie cutter McMansion houses that end up getting palmed off on unsuspecting young yuppie couples.

  7. billum | Feb 27, 2017 01:04pm | #7

    where's fig. 3 and fig. 4 WTF !!

  8. 2morweeks | Jul 25, 2019 08:08pm | #8

    I have all four, maybe it's time you buy a new computer. Quit blaming FHB.

    1. ct_yankee | Jul 02, 2024 11:46pm | #9

      It's the age of the comments - I'd wager that the original posting of the tip didn't have the same images as now and/or the user's PC at the time couldn't handle them.

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