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| virgin toilet brush, BTW, never seen the inside of a you-know-what |
have to do with this. . .
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| this is after a soap and water clean-up. the brush still has a lot of dried on latex paint |
I don't know if this is the best way to clean dried latex paint from a paint brush, but it is the way a contractor, that we once hired to do some painting, cleaned his. So it's the way I clean ours. There are solvents out their to remove latex paint, but I prefer not to use them.
After a soap and water washing of the paint brush in the sink, I fill a large 1 quart container with soapy water. Outside, I scrub the paintbrush with the toilet brush. A clean grill brush would also work, but toilet brushes can be had for $1 at Dollar Tree.
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| after scrubbing with a stiff brush for about 8 minutes |
About half the dried-on paint will come off with about 5-10 minutes of scrubbing with a stiff brush. That's when I get out my pocket knife. I use the large blade on the knife to scrape off the majority of the remaining paint. I only spend about another 5 minutes, with the scraping. And I'm done. I would say about 99% of the paint can be removed with these two tools.
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| I use the large blade on the knife and scrape for about 3 minutes, flip the brush over and scrape for another 3 minutes |
As you can see, I don't worry about paint on the handle part of the brush or on the metal sleeve that holds the bristles in place.
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| clean and ready to put away till the next painting job |
And, I can check off painting the garden chair, from my August to-do list! Woohoo! No more painting for a while for me -- painting's definitely not my favorite thing!
