5 More Things I Learned While Painting

Seems obvious. You'll damn near kick it over eventually. Put the lid back on.

I splashed paint everywhere trying to hammer the lid back on while there was still some sitting in the groove of the can. Not good. Put a rag over it.

Depending on what you're painting, brush marks will be hard to remove completely. I'm using a primer+semi gloss to do trim with, so it's a little heavier than standard paint. Brush marks come through readily unless you spend the extra time to feather them out.

In other words, don't swipe the brush across the work piece or you'll have unappealing diagonal brush patterns in the dried paint. Keep them straight and aligned with the trim (or wall direction, etc.)

In my no-tape experiment I did a little over painting on my floor. Fortunately, it's a hardy material that I can remove paint from easily. Be careful with a nice hardwood floor, for example, but you can peel or scrape off a lot of overpaint assuming it's not egregious.