by Catherine Lear

Created on: July 20, 2009

How to paint a window frame

Painting a window frame can and is a right pain in the butt. When I buy my property it is the one job I hate doing, thankfully I now employ people to do this most hateful of jobs. I own a property business and when I first started, I had to do all the jobs myself. Thankfully, now that my business has grown I can sit back and let someone else do the work of painting.

The one thing that I hated to do was to clean the glass window, I always seemed to get paint all over the window. I paid the price of not watching my dad when he was painting our home. Well can you blame me I was a young girl only interested in boys at the time? My dad nearly blew a gasket when he saw my very bad effort at painting the window frames in the house that I had brought.

The next house that I brought he came around and gave me a quick lesson on painting. Stand back girl he said and watch closely, OK dad I said thinking that I had cheap labour, well dads do things for nothing for there little girls don't they. It did not last long he did one frame and gave me the paintbrushes and told me to get on with it. Dads are not as daft as they seem.

However, I did notice what he did first, and that was to fit tape down the edge of the window frame between the glass and the wood. Once he had done that, he sanded all the wood down with rough sandpaper, and then he opened any windows that would open and sanded down the wood with a smooth type of sandpaper.

Now this is I went wrong when I painted the window frame I did not wash the window frame down I just painted the dam thing. My dad on the other hand filled a bucket with water added sugar soap and washed the whole of the window frame and then he dried it.

Then and only then did he start to paint. Dad, dad I said why you have bought two tins of paint. He gave me a withering look as if to say dumb blonde, I am blond by the way, then he said ones a tin of undercoat, and ones a tin of gloss paint. He then painted the window frame with the undercoat.

That where I had gone wrong as well, I did not use the undercoat I just used the gloss paint, the paint brushes he used were different, I used large ones he used small ones. No wonder I got so much paint on the window glass.

So use masking tape.

Use small paintbrushes.

Use a sugar soap to wash down the frame.

Use rough sandpaper and a smooth sand paper.

Above all if, you have a dad stand back and let him do the work.

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