# An interesting problem...



## driftweed (May 26, 2013)

Last week while doing 4 blow n go's apparently I got misinformed. Was told REPEATEDLY "we are not keeping the floors, have fun!" Now when I hear this, I always give them one last chance to save their floors just to be on the safe side.

Well, 3 days later I get a call...why is there overspray on all the floors? We are only replacing the living room carpet! 

umm....yeah...:whistling2:

Any suggestions? on a somewhat easy way to removed fully dried overspray off tan carpet?

I went with this method: fill a 5 up with scalding hot water, saturate area, use a stiff drywall blade to scrape and slush around, followed up by a full on carpet shampoo.

Oxi-clean didn't work
Mean green didn't work
dawn failed
Acetone took the dye off the carpet
Krud kutter didn't work, even in very liberal doses

We had four rooms to do all carpet, this was not a small boo-boo. They tried to call in for replacement of carpet but it was a friday afternoon and tenants were moving next day, so the flooring sub couldn't bail them out.


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## Susan (Nov 29, 2011)

What does YOUR contract say? 

****. I've been waiting for ages to ask you to use a brush. I've been ****ing waiting. Anyone can pull a trigger. Ask Liberia. Or Sierra leone. Or Somalia. Or any other country that supports child soldiers. 
But to cut with a brush? It's lost. Glad your system has been profitable for you, it's awesome. Goddamnit, learn your limits and respect them. I enjoy calling myself a tradesman because I have more than the knowledge but the skills to apply them professional goddamn ly. By hand. By spray. By sponge. By whatever.


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## Brian C (Oct 8, 2011)

that exact thing happened to me a few years ago. 
I was told the floors are getting re-polished so I didn't worry about drop sheets. Found out after the job was completed the architect overseeing the job decided to save the homeowners money and not re-polish floors. No one told me and they deducted the cost of buffing and resealing the floors from my account.


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## Epoxy Pro (Oct 7, 2012)

Our company rules is cover floors no matter what the HO says. This happened to one of my old bosses, he had to replace the carpet in 5 rooms. From that point on I make every one use drops.


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## Repaint Florida (May 31, 2012)

cdpainting said:


> Our company rules is cover floors no matter what the HO says. This happened to one of my old bosses, he had to replace the carpet in 5 rooms. From that point on I make every one use drops.


Same here CD, just last week while painting kitchen cabinets in a customers home she removed the tape and paper on the drywall when we came back the next day she told us the walls were getting painted not to worry i then told her we always protect the surrounding surface no matter what.

if you do this all the time you never make a mistake 

while taken pic's it looks professional & if anyone visits home they see a professional look ... 

but i understand in blow & go it's a different game


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## Hog (Apr 4, 2013)

Try denatured alcohol, it usually dissolves the dry paint, vac and sop it up with paper towels, keep in mind it's flammable. It doesn't smell as bad a goof off


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## Oden (Feb 8, 2012)

Try one of them carpet cleaners I can rent. The type that uses hot water, if it is just overspray it will work and fairly easy. Direct hits maybe along the walls will be way harder. Alcohol will loosen it up and get it off for sure but in ur case it sounds like a lot of linear feet, it'd take a while. A lot of alcohol and a lot of rags. And a lot of time.

A combo of loosening it up with the alcohol and the machine maybe? Worth trying. Dump alcohol in the hot water/cleaner mix. Or go ahead and spray the alcohol on the carpet and go right over it with the machine. Something like that.


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## Wildbill7145 (Apr 30, 2014)

Unless I'm outside, painting without drop sheets just doesn't feel natural to me so I get a little too freaked out when a stray drop lands on whatever surface I didn't cover whether it construction plywood subfloor or whatever.

Thus, for my own sake of mind always dropsheet.

I just finished working for a young couple who had their entire living room/kitchen redrywalled/spray primed. Guy did pretty good drywall work. Didn't dropsheet a bloody thing. Primer and drywall mud ALL over their furniture, kitchen cabinets, hardwood floor, brick fireplace. It's their first reno and they asked me if this was normal. It took every bit of strength to not laugh at the question.

Edit: Throughout the job he also left all of his tools, etc. sitting on their kitchen floor (sharp mud knives, drywall saws, etc.) They've got 3 kids under 3yrs old.

He is now 'storing' his tools at their house because he has another job coming up in this area in a month or so.

On top of all this, he didn't mask off the rooms whatsoever, so their entire house now has a layer of drywall dust all over it. He did absolutely no cleanup throughout the job or at the end of it. He also didn't remove any of the debris/cutoffs, etc. when he was done.

Couldn't stop shaking my head every time I walked into this place.


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## ttalbon (Aug 6, 2009)

Try getting advice from a carpet cleaning company. I'm sure it won't be the first time they've had to deal with that problem.


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## Gough (Nov 24, 2010)

cdpainting said:


> Our company rules is cover floors no matter what the HO says. This happened to one of my old bosses, he had to replace the carpet in 5 rooms. From that point on I make every one use drops.


Yeah, we've had just enough jobs I where things change "for budget reasons" and the floors end up NOT getting done.

That being said, we've had good luck with one of the local carpet-cleaning companies. On several of the jobs, they ended up having to re-stretch the carpet, but that's still a lot cheaper than replacing it.


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## driftweed (May 26, 2013)

Csheils said:


> What does YOUR contract say?
> 
> ****. I've been waiting for ages to ask you to use a brush. I've been ****ing waiting. Anyone can pull a trigger. Ask Liberia. Or Sierra leone. Or Somalia. Or any other country that supports child soldiers.
> But to cut with a brush? It's lost. Glad your system has been profitable for you, it's awesome. Goddamnit, learn your limits and respect them. I enjoy calling myself a tradesman because I have more than the knowledge but the skills to apply them professional goddamn ly. By hand. By spray. By sponge. By whatever.


Really? lol 

I had a very funny and humiliating reply to that. But decided not to feed the drama fire.

keep on being king of the painters:notworthy:


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## Susan (Nov 29, 2011)

Just spray the rest of the carpet


Sent from my iPhone using PaintTalk.com


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## TJ Paint (Jun 18, 2009)

Rent a shampoo deal. After soaking in hot water use a stiff nylon brush. Try dawn liquid soap. 

I don't believe anybody that says the floors are being redone until I'm standing on floorboards or carpet pad. Until then, It's getting covered. Took me once to learn my lesson. I got lucky, it was tile and came off pretty easy.


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## Oden (Feb 8, 2012)

I brush and roll and also spray with probably equal competence. I got over 20 years in this, and to stay bizzy I never turned down work. Learned both.

That's been my path. I do however know guys who either brush and roll only or spray only. Specialists. I don't think any less of them as painters. What's available to you to do is what you learn how do do. And if a guy stays bizzy and makes his bills doing one thing, well good for him I think. We don't learn, well I never did learn new things just for the sake of being a well rounded painter. I've always just did what I had to to make my bills that week and if it meant take on another skill then that's what I did.

Anyhow. Driftweed's mistake wasn't being a spray guy, it was thinking the carpet was getting replaced and it didn't. He'd have still sprayed the space. But he'd have kept the carpet clean. He has the skillset to make that happen.


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## jacob33 (Jun 2, 2009)

I had this happen once where a customer assured me several times the carpet was coming out and not to worry about it. I Had drops down they came in and said you don't need those don't worry about the rest of the house. I said ok but kept covering the floor. They ended up not replacing the carpet I think they might have been trying to get a free carpet out of me but im not sure.


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## robladd (Nov 22, 2010)

DW in the future have enough cardboard shields to cover ever linear ft of wall space in your largest unit. I went through the same thing your going through.

Hot water, alcohol and a stiff scrub brush with rental carpet cleaner. Live and learn,


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## driftweed (May 26, 2013)

Yeah, we all pitched in and did it as a team effort. Heck, these guys toss $40k a year my way, so the least I could do was help out. Was it fun? no. But we all came away with a better system to prevent this in the future.

It simply was a matter of the maint supervisor cracking under pressure, because the manager rented the unit out literally as soon as it emptied. So the deadline was shorter than normal.

Since they trust me with all things paint related, I became the go to guy to answer the question. An answer I did not readily have available.


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## thinkpainting/nick (Dec 25, 2012)

Most HO"s fiquere it's cheaper and less time if the painter doesn't have to cover floors and they are right. Setting drops, masking and then picking up work area daily adds time $$. 

Same when HO says oh don't worry when you guys come to paint the room will be empty:no: For repaints I always estimate covering floors and moving furniture :yes:


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## Wildbill7145 (Apr 30, 2014)

thinkpainting/nick said:


> Same when HO says oh don't worry when you guys come to paint the room will be empty:no: For repaints I always estimate covering floors and moving furniture :yes:


I have to get way better at enforcing this, or at least grinding people for a solid answer as to whether this will be the case. Last week a customer told me they'd have everything out of my way.

I got there and there was 4000 baby toys all over the place, shoes, cribs, kitchen counter covered in stuff I was supposed to be painting behind, etc. She said her hubby had to work late and they didn't have time to move anything because they needed 'family time'.

They knew I was coming for a week. He had to work til 6pm the night before. Shoot me.


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## straight_lines (Oct 17, 2007)

driftweed said:


> Last week while doing 4 blow n go's apparently I got misinformed. Was told REPEATEDLY "we are not keeping the floors, have fun!" Now when I hear this, I always give them one last chance to save their floors just to be on the safe side.
> 
> Well, 3 days later I get a call...why is there overspray on all the floors? We are only replacing the living room carpet!
> 
> ...


 
I used to work for a carpet restoration franchise company called Professional Carpet Systems. We had a product called OPG, oil paint and grease remover. Was great at getting overpay off apt floors, which is we did a lot of turnovers. 

Haven't seen a product that could perform like that but I would see if there is a local you could get some from. I am sure it was made to work with steam.


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## Danahy (Dec 11, 2008)

When I went to trade in my old truck I noticed a huge dark walnut stain hidden under one of my floor mats. Omg! I had already settled on the trade in value, and this stain was at least a year old. In a panic I ran into the paint booth looking for anything I could get my hands on, and there it was... A spray bottle that I use for my Krud Kutter gun and parts cleaner. I soaked the area, let sit for a minute then scrubbed the **** out of it with a scrub brush. Instantly it foamed up with lots of stain. Sucked it up with the wet vac and repeated about 5 times. 90% gone. The remaining 10% matched all the other stains. So I threw the mat back down and the rest was history. Between scrubs I tested it out on the leather, steering wheel and other plastic parts of the interior, surprisingly it worked as well.


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## Stretch67 (Oct 7, 2013)

Wildbill7145 said:


> Unless I'm outside, painting without drop sheets just doesn't feel natural to me so I get a little too freaked out when a stray drop lands on whatever surface I didn't cover whether it construction plywood subfloor or whatever.
> 
> Thus, for my own sake of mind always dropsheet.
> 
> ...


Lol, ive seen that a few times. But I bet the guy was cheap!

Now storing the tools for a month? Thats a bit of a stretch...


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## Wildbill7145 (Apr 30, 2014)

bryceraisanen said:


> Lol, ive seen that a few times. But I bet the guy was cheap!
> 
> Now storing the tools for a month? Thats a bit of a stretch...


Yep, she told me after I got into the job that they'd hired they guy because he was the cheapest they could find. That scared me.

The storing of the tools did make me laugh. That's a bit over the top. I've never heard of that before.


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## Criard (Nov 23, 2013)

Challenger Cleaner PC-737 (aka potassium hydroxide). It usually removes any dried latex pretty easily, so be careful not to get it on other painted surfaces.


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## driftweed (May 26, 2013)

Update: carpet came out fine after the steam cleaning. Had to drain his tanks a few extra times from the excessive water, but he pulled it off.


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## Danahy (Dec 11, 2008)

driftweed said:


> Update: carpet came out fine after the steam cleaning. Had to drain his tanks a few extra times from the excessive water, but he pulled it off.



Sweet! 


Mike.


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