An old guy at the hardware store in Boise told me to try a teaspoon of dish soap in my finishing water, and it actually worked.

3 comments

3 Comments

Honestly I used to be in the "it's just paint water, who cares" camp too. I figured a splash of whatever was good enough and never measured anything. But last summer I had this big project where I was painting a bunch of trim and kept gunking up my brushes in the rinse bucket, wasting time and paint trying to clean them. Finally tried the teaspoon of dish soap trick and it actually made a real difference - the brush rinsed clean in seconds instead of me scrubbing it for five minutes. So yeah, I'm converted now.

matthew_owens93mo agoOG Member

That old guy in Boise is onto something. The soap breaks the water's surface tension so the paint can't form a skin on top. I learned that from a painter who worked on old houses in Savannah. It stops that weird film from forming in your bucket overnight, which saves a lot of paint from getting wasted.

jesse843mo agoMost Upvoted

I mean, it's just paint water. We're not mixing rocket fuel here. My grandpa used to spit in his can of latex and it turned out fine. If a drop of Dawn keeps the brush from getting gunky, great. But I'm not setting a timer or measuring it with a lab spoon.