(Removing) Paint on hardwood floor

I'm painting the trim in a room with hardwood floors. It has standard base molding and quarter round. I taped off the floor. After painting and removing the tape, there was some paint that "leaked" through onto the floor. I was able to remove it with a blade that left only a couple minor scratches. Any tips to avoid this? I'm ready to start the next room and want to prevent the same thing from happening.

 

I dislike tape for exactly this reason. You might want to tape like you did and practice painting the shoe mold like there was no tape. Pressing the tape firmly down with fingernail or putty knife helps the tape to seal better. Also a lighter coat of paint helps.

 

This exact thing happend to me when i painted the trim in my house one night, throughout about 1000sq ft of freshly finished hard wood floors! the next morning when i removed the tape i about blew my lid cause i spent so much time taping!!! using a butter knife, i was able to get 99% of it off on my hands and knees inch by inch... using goof off worked ok, but you really need to be carefull with that stuff cause if you rub it hard enough it'll start to work the finish off the floors...

next time i have to do this, i'll tape, but use an 'edge' to move along (like a piece of fomica) and also use little paint and light strokes at the edge where the floor meets the molding.... i guess the key here is to paint as though there isnt any tape there....

good luck!!
Kevin

 

Take a sheet of plastic and lay it down along the baseboards..using some double sided tape apply the tape to the underside of the plastic get it as close as you can to the baseboard then tape off the edge on top of the plastic that is next to the baseboard...trick is to make sure to go slow and not move the plastic. I agree best thing to do is to paint as if there where no tape there. In some applications you may be further ahead to remove baseboard if you can.

 

I use a narrow, slanted trim brush to apply a light coat of paint on base trim. It takes a steady hand to keep paint off floor. If you happen to get paint on floor, wipe immediately with damp cloth. To wipe close to base trim, you can slip cloth over edge of putty knife to get a straight edge.