House Painting ToolsNo matter what you want to paint, there are a variety of house painting tools and equipment designed to do the job such as rollers, brushes, power painters, etc. With the information that I provide below on each type of tool, you'll be able to not only choose the right tool for the job, but be armed with the knowledge on how to use it for various applications and you'll feel like a pro!
Rollers The pros and cons of hand painting tools are simple. The roller is four to five times as fast as the brush, and, unlike the brush, it produces professional looking results even in the hands of an unskilled user. But it is not as versatile as the brush. Rollers and Brushes are the most common house painting tools that we think of. The roller that suits large flat areas like walls can't paint into corners, nor can it keep its speed advantage on surfaces like pipes and columns. So you need a brush, or special rollers for those jobs, and for cutting in around trim at windows and doors. But it still leads the field as a time saver. Originally designed for painting interior walls, rollers with specialized sleeves or attachments simplify other indoor and many outdoor painting jobs as well. A roller firmly screwed onto an extension pole or broom handle lets you tackle ceilings without a ladder and do floors without bending down. Frame design. A traditional roller frame has a spring-type mechanism called a cage to hole the pile cover, or sleeve, that applies paint. A well-designed cage will hold the sleeve securely without needing a wing nut and, at the same time, will permit you to slide the sleeve off and on easily. A cage should spin smoothly on nylon bearings. The handle and frame should feel sturdy in your hand. Roller frames come in many sizes to hold special-purpose sleeves, from the V-shaped doughnut for painting inside corners to short 3-inch rollers for doing trim. 
Roller sleeves. The best covers have a uniform, fluffy, lint-free pile and a tough water-resistant center. Cheap roller covers hold less paint, splatter more, and tend to mat. Rollers are made to suit the type of surface on which they will be used, often classified by manufacturers as:
The "nap length" or "pile height" of the roller covering varies accordingly. For smooth surfaces it's ¼ -inch, for semi-smooth, 3/8-inch to ½-inch, for rough ¾-inch, and for extra rough, 1 ½ inches. A smooth grade roller used on a rough surface will leave unpainted gaps and spots. A rough grade roller used on a smooth surface will overload the surface with paint, producing sags and runs. Always buy to suit the job. Roller quality involves the type and density of the pile fibers. It is not merely a matter of durability. Higher quality pile produces a smoother, better covering job with less effort. As the best roller cover costs less than a quart of typical house paint, it is wise to use a quality grade. Sleeves also come in different fibers. Lamb's wool is best for applying oil-base paints; Dynel works well with water-base paints. Acetate and polyester can be successfully used with either. Mohair covers give the smooth, textureless finish that high-gloss enamels and varnishes need. Don't allow paint to harden on the roller during the overall painting job. (Wash the roller thoroughly at the end of the day, or keep it immersed.) As you're not likely to repeat a major interior or exterior house painting job for several years you'll save time and trouble by simply discarding the used roller covers. 
TIP: If you are going to continue painting with the same paint and color the next day or two, I've found that keeping the sleeve wet and rolling it up in household plastic wrap will keep it ready for use. Brushes The brush requires more time and skill, but it is still the most versatile painting tool, and the best for certain types of work. It is, for example, the best choice for fine enamel and varnish work. The bristles of a brush may be either natural or synthetic, as nylon or polyester. Natural bristles are set in the brush in the same relative position they occupied on the animal, with the large inner (skin) end inward, the smaller outer end outward. The better synthetic bristles are set in the same way, and are also made with a taper. Typical taper of a three-inch-long high-grade nylon bristle: 9/1000-inch at the large end to 5/1000-inch at the small (outer) end. (Low priced brush bristle lack the taper.) The tips of quality nylon brush bristles are also flagged - producing a split end that holds and distributes paint better. (Natural bristles already have this feature.) The China bristle used in many quality brushes is a hog bristle, named for its national origin. The Tientsin type from northern China is long and fine, as the animals grow a thicker coat in that colder area. These are suited to fine enameling and varnishing. The Hankow bristle from southern China is shorter and stiffer, suited to heavier paints. In general, both natural and nylon bristles work well in all conventional paints, though natural bristles tend to lose some of their resilience in water paints. Nylon bristles do the same in alcohol finishes like shellac. (Cure the nylon floppiness by turpentine immersion and thorough drying.) TIP: If summer heat takes the spring out of nylon bristles during exterior painting with water paint (for which nylon is ideal), use an occasional ice-water dip to cure the trouble. Brush shapes and sizes should be matched to the job - wide brushes for large, flat surfaces like walls and ceilings, narrow ones for narrow surfaces like moldings and trim. (Brushes fit into fluted molding forms better than rollers or pads.) As brushes actually become shorter with wear, a wide brush frequently drawn broadside along a narrow molding, so that only a central brush portion is used, may develop a center notch, forming what painters call a "fishtail." Drawn sideways along a narrow molding, its bristles tend to pack into numerous separately bent "fingers." Either way, the brush becomes unsuited to its original large area work. To avoid this problem, use narrow brushes for narrow work. Sash brushes may be round, oval, or flat angle-cut ends. The angle cut prevents the finger formation mentioned above. All three do the job effectively. The choice is a matter of personal preference. Personally, I enjoy using the flat angle-cut sash brush as it gives me a nice edge to do the cut-ins at the top of walls near the ceiling and around trim work. Your best final guide in selecting a brush suited to the work: a comfortable "feel." If you like the way a particular type of brush handles when you use it, you'll do better with it. Buying Tips: The best brushes are full and thick. Each bristle will be "flagged" on the tip - looking like human hair with split ends - to hold more paint. The bristles should feel springy, not stiff, when you press them against your palm, and they should fan out evenly. Bristles should be firmly glued on either side of a divider that is no more than a third of their width and held by a band (the ferrule) fastened with nails. Handles should be sturdy and comfortable to hold. 
Pad Applicators The pad applicator, which slides instead of rolling, now often replaces the brush for the special purposes just mentioned. And many new pad applicators have features that eliminate still further the skill required by the brush on the same type of job. The wheel-edge roller, for example, with its wheels riding along the ceiling, lets you apply a different color to the wall without irregularity or spillover along the line of juncture. The corner roller, on the other hand, paints into vertical corners, applying a starting stripe of the same color on two adjoining walls in a single pass. It's a good idea when painting with a pad applicator not to overload it. I find that pressing it on some newspaper once or twice after loading the pad with paint, helps distribute the paint on the pad and takes off any larger "blobs". Using the wheel-edge roller type of pad, it's very important not to get any paint on the wheels itself, especially when applying a different color than the adjoining wall or ceiling. Not everyone is comfortable with paint pads. For many painters who use brushes with confidence and satisfaction, paint pads seem to match neither the control offered by brushes nor the speed associated with rollers. Others, however, find paint pads efficient to use and easy to care for. 
Paint Glove The mitt or paint glove has a paint-holding nap for quick coverage of staircase balusters, railings, gutters, or pipes. Wearing the glove, you just dip it into the paint, then clasp your thumb and forefinger together around the object and move the glove down the length until the surface is coated with paint. 
Power Painters For a big job, roller painting can be speeded with an appliance that automatically fees paint from a central source to its specially designed roller by way of a long hose. A button on the roller handle lets you adjust the flow. The advantages: You don't have to keep reloading the roller from a tray or bucket every few minutes. When you are working from a ladder, you are saved the inconvenience of moving both the latter and your paint supply each time. Models powered by electricity, a hand pump, or a CO2 cartridge all perform essentially the same tasks. They come with a brush and pad attachments as well as roller frames with a variety of sleeves in different naps. The drawbacks: Cleaning these appliances, particularly the hoses, is time-consuming. So is maintenance. They waste ample amounts of paint. Their best use is for exterior house painting with big areas to cover and lots of ladder work. 
Tools for Prep Work
Shave hook, or molding scraper Razor scraper Wall scraper, or wallboard taping knife Putty knife Hook scraper Spackle Caulking gun and latex caulk Rags Patching material for large or deep holes Sandpaper Washing compound (T.S.P. - trisodium phosphate)
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