Top 5 Carpet Protection Products you need to know about when redecorating
No matter how careful you are, decorating, particularly painting carries a risk that you will spill paint on your best Wilton. Here are 5 top carpet protection solutions.
- Self-adhesive carpet film
Self-adhesive carpet film is a very popular product when it comes to protecting your carpet whilst decorating is taking place in your home. It is widely available, with versions of the product made by numerous manufacturers. It is rather like a large sheet of cling film, except much thicker and easier to handle. You can lay it in strips, like runners or use it to cover your entire carpet. The self-adhesive coating ensures that it sticks easily to your carpet, irrespective of whether you use a special applicator or flatten it down with your hands. You don’t need any additional tape and once down the film won’t travel. It’s industrial strength too, so it won’t split or tear. When you have completed you decorating, simply vacuum the film or sweep it with a brush and pull it up. It really is that simple.
- Dust sheets
Despite all the new products available to cover your carpets during decorating, you will be hard-pushed to find a decorator who doesn’t carry some dust sheets in his van. there are different types available, usually made of cotton. cotton twill with a polythene backing is a popular choice because the poly backing prevents seepage through the material. cotton dust sheets are versatile too, apart from covering the floor they can be utilised to protect furniture. a good dust sheet will last long enough to see you through many a decorating job. whilst you might not be able to get all the paint spills off, dust sheets can stand repeated washing.
- Corrugated Plastic
For the heaviest of jobs, particularly those where building work needs to be carried out in the room prior to decorating starting, corrugated plastic planks are a great way to protect your carpets. The planks come in 2mm, 3mm, 4mm and 5mm thickness and in addition to catching spillages from paint, white spirit or other substances they can also withstand heavy items being dropped. Once the planks are laid, they provide a stable walking surface and can stay down until the job is complete. Corrugated plastic planks are more expensive at the outset than other coverage methods; however, they last a long time and can be used repeatedly.
- Masking Tape
Masking tape has so many uses, such as covering fixtures and fitting. However, it can be used with newspaper to create a very effective barrier that will prevent you getting paint from brush strokes across the edge of your carpet where it meets the skirting board. Cut a piece of masking tape long enough to run the full length of your newspaper page. One third of the tape should be on the paper, with two-thirds providing a large enough surface to fix adjacent to the skirting board. Repeat this process until the carpet edge around your entire skirting board is masked.
- Overshoes
No matter how hard you try to avoid it, during decorating your footwear soon picks up paint and paste spills. Not only can these ruin your shoes, you can transfer them to floors and carpets in other parts of your house. It’s a real burden having to remove your shoes each time you leave the room you are decorating. Overshoes, which you only wear in that room slip easily over your shoes and when you need to move to another part of the house, you can pull them off.
