Get the Tape you Need for the Task

I have always been amazed at all of the things that are needed when you own a home.  This year my family moved from an apartment to a home and the fact is that we have used more items than I ever thought possible to renovate and get this home to a nice livable condition.  The fun times we have had working on flooring, painting, and plumbing has led us to learn many new skills and use many products that we didn’t think we would.  The truth is that we have ended up buying crazy amounts of tape over the past few months and I wish I would have known what we needed ahead of time.  If so I would have simply gone to a packaging supplies store and bought a bulk amount so I could get a discount on it all. But I want to go over some of the things we learned while using all these types of tape.

One thing we learned pretty fast is that painters tape is not all created equal.  The truth is that there are many different types of brands and many different prices involved in painters tape.  What we discovered is that the lower end dollar store painters tape is not the correct answer to your task for most situations.  We loved the dollar price tag for the dollar store painters tape but found out that it did not stop paint at all.  It was actually basically a sticky net where the paint would always penetrate.  It was also very hard to tear and place on objects and tight spaces.  This left us taking hours of our time to put the tape in place and then find out that it did nothing to help us.  Using the expensive 3m painters tape was twice as fast and actually blocked paint and liquid.  This was by far the best thing to buy and I would suggest it.  Unless you are only tagging items and writing what they are on the tape then I would opt to spend more and get the 3m brand. 

The next thing we learned was that Duct tape is a must.  This type of tape is the answer to many temporary problems.  What we found was that it was more valuable to temporarily fix something than taking the time to go out and purchase the correct fix.  For some situations, we only need something to be stuck together for a short period of time.  Like a pole and paint roller or brush.  We had an extendable pole break and we only needed to use it one last time before we were finished with a project.  But it broke on the part that attached to the painting brush and roller.  So we taped it back together.  It would have cost 20 bucks and take about an hour to get and get a new one. 

A temporary fix was to Duct tape the roller on and it absolutely worked.  It was not a perfect long-term answer, but it was the perfect fix for the time we had.  It was the end of the day and the project would have been expanded to a much longer time frame.  So take these tips and buy a bunch of these at your packaging supplies store. It really is the best thing to do.

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