This lit­tle project did not go quite as planned. After my week­end paint­ing projects, the kitchen cab­i­net, and one I’ll be shar­ing next week, I wanted to show you how to clean your paint brushes after using both oil and water based prod­ucts, and how to make them feel like new again. I know when I spend a lit­tle more money to buy a Purdy paint brush I want to make sure it last me a while. As I’ve recently dis­cov­ered I really don’t like work­ing with oil based prod­ucts, but I wanted to share with you the safe way to clean them and dis­pose of your mate­ri­als. The key words there are I “wanted to show you”. So let the dis­ap­point­ments begin…

First I put together my kit of a glass jar, min­eral spir­its, and dish detergent.

I put the tini­est amount of min­eral spir­its in the jar, and very quickly real­ized the paint brush was too big for the jar. I searched my entire house for some­thing else I could use, but came up empty handed. I was only going to use the min­eral spir­its for the brush that used the oil based paint, but now I was going to have to go a dif­fer­ent route. My train of thought was that maybe the dish deter­gent would work because it cuts the grease and oil on dishes and clothes. And it helped a lit­tle, the brush went from rock solid to usabl–ish, a big improve­ment all things con­sid­ered. I just kept mas­sag­ing the soap in the bris­tles, and then swirling it in the hot soapy water. As you can see from the pic­ture above I went with plas­tic tup­per­ware, I didn’t use this for the min­eral spir­its because I wasn’t sure if it would absorb in the plas­tic or not.

Once I was happy with that paint brushes progress I did the same with the other two paint brushes that were used with water based paints. The next step was to bring them inside and sim­mer them in white dis­tilled vinegar.

You want to soak them for a cou­ple min­utes before you start to sim­mer them. On a ran­dom side note the boyf (stran­gly) loves vine­gar, as in he’ll drink it. So while I was in the kitchen I heard from his office:

Boyf: I want to taste what­ever you’re making!

Me: Oh, well it’s paint brushes lightly sim­mered in vinegar

Boyf: (dis­ap­point­ingly) Oh

Me: Would you like me to pour you a glass?

Any­way, here’s what they looked like afterwards

In con­clu­sion, for non-oil based paint brush projects the vine­gar really helps. And although the dish deter­gent and vine­gar helped the brush with oil based paint on it, I don’t think it’s worth the trouble.

But my whole point of this post was to help you out if you need to clean with some­thing like min­eral spir­its and you aren’t sure how to prop­erly dis­pose of the stuff. So I found a web­site that might help, espe­cially if you don’t have a com­mu­nity haz­ardous waste drop off, like me. All the infor­ma­tion is on this down­load­able brochure (the one titled The Five-Point Pro­gram for Left­over Paint) from paint.org

Here are the main points for dis­pos­ing paint thin­ners, tur­pen­tine, and min­eral spirits:

1. Put used brush clean­ers in a closed con­tainer and leave it in a safe place until the paint par­ti­cles set­tle to the bottom.

2. Pour off the clear liq­uid into an empty, clean con­tainer which has a lid for reuse.

3. Add an obsorbent mate­r­ial such as a cat box fil­ter, shred­ded news­pa­per, or saw­dust to the remain­ing residue.

4. Let this residue dry com­pletely before dis­pos­ing of it in your reg­u­lar trash.

So there you have the do’s and don’ts of paint brush clean­ing. Maybe I should start a Fri­day Fail­ures fea­ture? One thing I know for sure, DO NOT pour this kind of stuff down the drain!

Do you have any tips for clean­ing up oil based paints?