Cleaning Paint Brushes

• While painting with water based paints, clean brushes after every two hours and when painting ends.
• Remove extra paint from pad and brush using a brush-cleaning tool with teeth to scrap the paint off.
• Make a solution of one gallon of warm water and ½ a cup of fabric softener. The softener is a wetting agent, which reduces the surface tension of water when it dissolves in it, thus helping the paint to dissolve quickly. Make many gallons of this solution.
• Dip the brush or pad into the solution and move it around while counting till 10. The paint will dislodge itself from the brush and settle at the bottom of the bucket.
• Dry the brush in a paintbrush spinner to remove water from the brush. Make you own spinner. Take a 5-gallon bucket with a lid. Make an 8-inch hole in the middle of the lid. Place a plastic trash bag inside the bucket and replace the lid. Now splatter the brush inside the bucket, the splatter remains inside the plastic trash bag. Dispose off the plastic bag.
• Do not use dish wash soap to clean brushes. It will cause the bushing and the bristles to stick together.
• After cleaning the brush in the warm water and fabric softener solution there is no need to rinse it in water. Repeatedly washing the brush in this solution, allows the fabric softener to coat the bushing and the bristles, which allows the paint to flow smoothly from the brush.
• Use the same method to clean rollers and paint pads. Cleaning paint from rollers takes some more time and a number of dips in the solution. But the end result is the same.