How to Mask Windows & Doors for Exterior Spraying | Pro Tips for Windy Conditions

All right, today I'm gonna be talking about masking windows. I'm gonna give you some tips and tricks on how I go about masking windows. There's a lot of different ways, just like there's a lot of different ways to cut in the ceiling line. It is a little bit windy out today. It is pretty cold in the morning. I'm pretty cool on this side. So just some tips and tricks, how I go about masking. I'm gonna be masking this window right here. When I mask, I only carry two different masking products in my trailer when it comes to the rolls that go on paper and film. I use 72 inch masking film and I use nine inch paper. I don't use any other sizes. I fold up under or add multiple rows of paper if I need to. I don't like to carry a lot of different sizes because then you just gotta manage a lot of different products that I don't like to have to worry about. So 72 inch film, nine inch paper. Typically my maskers, I have a one inch tape loaded onto my maskers. Unless I'm masking like on a roof or a fence that is hard to stick to, then I'll put an inch and a half on my maskers and I'll typically be frog tape orange. This is frog tape blue, similar to frog tape green, except it's a little less expensive because it has a different type paper product on it. And it has a different release time on it than frog tape green. But if frog tape green is too expensive for you, check out frog tape blue. It's one of my go-to products. I typically mask windows with, I don't use production tape when I'm masking windows because the sun eventually is gonna hit it on the vinyl. It could be like metal windows. They could be oxidized. The adhesive on your production tape could stick to it. It could pull off the oxidation or pull off the finish on metal windows, et cetera. So I typically mask my windows with frog tape blue or frog tape green. And if you're gonna be letting it set overnight, it will release the next day a lot easier than a production tape will. So today I'm using frog tape blue inch and inch and a half. So I fill in with inch and a half. I have inch on my maskers. And one of the reasons why I have inch on my maskers is when you're pulling your masking, there's not as much adhesive because the tape as and as wide. So it comes off your masker a lot easier, smoother, and faster and you're not fighting your masker as much. So I just prefer one inch on my maskers. I always have maskers with ladder hooks on it so I can have them with me both at all times. If I'm masking the whole side of the house that's gonna require paper or plastic. If I'm just using plastic, just doing windows, I'll just take my paper masker, you know, use if you attached to a ladder, something like that, it'll be with my ladder. So it's somewhere with me. So I'm gonna be masking a window right here. I'll show you a small window, how I go about masking this. Little bit breezy when I was up high. There was the plastic was catching the wind. It gets a little bit frustrating, but I'll show you some tips how I manage that. We'll see what the wind, you know, does. It's kind of calmed down a little bit. But as soon as I get on the ladder, wind picks up. So I take my masking, I'm going to start it off. I'm going to put it on the edge of the window and I'm going to start off about a quarter inch, a half inch from the vinyl right here. Tuck it underneath the drip edge right there. I'm going to press that down, hold it, stretch it out. And I'm going to get to this end right here. I'm going to look and gauge. I'm going to pull it, go, okay, I want it to be about a half inch to a quarter inch to the end. I'm going to pull it tight, snap it, and it in turn. So if that happens, check my blade. It didn't tear very well. Start it again. So I'm going to put it about a half inch, quarter inch. I'm going to roll it out. I'm going to gauge, I'm going to look. Just take your time, get it right where you want it. Snap it, pulls my line. Now I'm going to pull this tight, pack it down. Now the wind starts to pick up a little bit. This is why I do, I'll take my inch and a half tape. I'm going to tear off a piece of inch and a half tape like this. I'm going to fold out my plastic masking on folded here. You can see the wind's now starting to kick up. So you can see the wind's kicking up. It wants to blow it away. The side that is blowing it too, I'm going to grab that. I'm going to pull it down. I'm going to tack it down. That's going to hold it. That's going to keep it from blowing away. It's wanting to blow that direction. So I'm going to work with the wind. Now I'm going to take my inch and a half. I'm going to run it down to where I tacked it to right there. Put it up. Now it's blowing this direction. So I'm going to take now, go with the wind. This side, I'm going to grab it. I'm going to tack it down. So now I've pulled it tight. I'm going to run masking along my vinyl right here. Down right to where I tacked it again. I'm going to press this to make sure it contacts my plastic everywhere. And I see it's good and tight. So now I've got that all. The wind wasn't too bad. It kind of cooperated a little bit. So now I'm going to take tuck this under. So you have the option of taking, pulling this down, and you can trim it with a knife. But I don't like trimming it with a knife, because then that plastic on a windy day is going to blow away in the wind. So I'm just going to take and tuck it up. The last thing you want to do is upset the neighbors because your masking and plastic is flying in their yard. I'm going to roll it under. I'm going to hurry up quickly, mask this bottom before the wind catches it and lifts it up. So now I'm going to tack that on there. So now that's holding it down. So this side, the winds want to lift that up. You can see it's lifting it up a little bit. I'm going to get another piece of masking. Put this on there, tear that corner, fold this corner up. Like that. I'm going to press this down, make sure that's good and tight. Now I don't want paint getting on that corner right there. So I'm just going to fill that corner in, because our house is going to be black. I don't want black paint on my white trim. The corners, I always take, put a piece on the corner, fill that in, check everything. You can see this could be a leak right there. So I want to make sure that's good and tight right there. Now I'm going to fill this in just like this. So put it on there and I got a little piece over hanging. I don't have to worry about cutting it. I just lift it up, fold it up, tack it down. I can see it got a little tiny leak right there. One of the tools that you should have when masking is a tough gap. So this is keeping the tape with me at all times. I don't have to have it in the amount. I don't have to have it on my wrist. It's available for me whenever I need it. So I can just tear a piece off. I want to make sure this little corner right here is perfect. It's again, get that on there, fold this up, tuck it in, and my window is masked. Now that process would actually happen significantly faster if I wasn't videoing, but I was videoing. So the process was a little bit slower. So now I'm going to check this, make sure. Now say you had a little spot right there. If that was a spot that needs to be touched up, I can tuck this up underneath there, touch that spot up. Now I'm not going to have that little black spot on that trim. So that's how I go about masking a small window with plastic. We're going to move over here. We'll show you a larger window. How we go about masking a larger window with plastic. All right, so we've got a larger window. And I'm going to see if I can actually reach from end to end to master's window. Once again, I'm going to get up on my ladder, begin masking, 72 inch masking. Film masking blade. All my maskers have the film blades on them. I don't have interchange blades. I don't use the paper blades for anything. My paper maskers and my film maskers have the sharp film blades. Tough gas, so I got my tape with me at all times. I'm going to get up on the ladder and begin. Looks like I might be able to reach from end to end. So I'm going to reach over here, start about a quarter inch from the end. You don't want it to be any farther out this way than a quarter of an inch, because you want your two inch, or your inch and half tape to be able to go from your window to your plastic. I'm going to get it up underneath here, underneath my drip metal. So I can get over here. I'm going to measure off about, want it to end up about a quarter of an inch, you know, half inch, quarter inch, eighth inch, right in that area. So you can see it's about a quarter of an inch. I'm going to tack this down. Now my wind, the last window I was doing, the wind was blowing this direction. So we'll see where it catches my plastic. The starts are lifted up. So the wind's pushing it up against the window. So I'm going to move over to this side. It hasn't picked it up yet. So I'll quickly grab it, tack it down before the wind catches it and lifts it up in the air. So far, the wind's been cooperating. So you can see I've got about three quarters of an inch from, you know, my window to my plastic. If it's out too far, you're going to have to run multiple rows of tape. Wind's cooperating still. So I'm going to run my tape down. I'm going to get it a perfect line right on the edge of that window, press it down. Now I'm going to move down because I got a larger window. I got to work on and off of a ladder. I'm going to pull this over, pull it tight, tack it down and fill this in. The wind is blowing that direction a little bit. As soon as I started these windows, it kind of calmed down a little bit, which is nice. So I'm going to check that, make sure there's no leaks. I'm going to come over to this side. I'm going to pull this down. Now I can pull it because I'm down on the ground. I can pull it tight all the way down to the bottom. And I'll work from the bottom up. So I'm going to come across, tack that down. So now I've got my extra. So we got an extra hanging out. I'm going to tuck that up underneath. Just sitting it up, way up inside. Now I'm just going to roll it down. I'm going to roll it down to right at the bottom where my tape and my tape will touch the window and the plastic at the same time. It's again, window, the wind is cooperating. So I'm going to show you what I'll do is I'll grab. I'll come here. I'll put, touch my plastic on there. Now I'll raise it up to the line I want it to. So I'm going to touch the plastic. It's going to stack onto the tape. Now I'm going to find that line and ask it. Now I want to grab it inside. Make sure it's tacked all the way the corner. I'm going to pull the corner over. So the corner needs to be filled in here. Corner needs to be filled in here. I could pull this tape out right here. So when I pull the tape, I'm going to tear it. I've got a nice corner right here. I'll put that down on there. And then the part that's overhanging, I'll fold it up. And I can straighten the opposite side. So you can use a knife and trim it with a knife. I just like doing it just by tearing pieces of plastic. Fill the corner in. Make sure there's no leaks right there. And you're good to go. This side, the same thing. I'm going to tear. This corner wasn't as sharp that I tore, but it'll work. I'll make it work. I'm just going to fold this up, just like that. So now I got a hole right here. We want to fill that hole in. Make sure that it's touching the plastic everywhere. It's tight. Everything, all of our leaks are gone. No leaks. We've got one more side right here. We got to come up on the ladder. I'm going to extend it up a little bit. It's going to tuck underneath that drip edge. It's like that. So now it's all good to go. This window, this house is all one color, monochromatic. It's a green, black color. We're going to spray the whole entire thing. We're going to spray it and then pull the masking. We want to make sure there's no leaks. Check it out. Everything's tight. You don't see anything. Looks good. There's a window, masked with plastic. A little bit cool weather. It's probably in the low 40s and a little bit breezy. Right now I'm going to show you using green frog tape masking. Sometimes I use green or blue. The green frog tape will just one thing I'll say about it is the green frog tape, the adhesive. It feels like it's not as aggressive as the blue frog tape. So it feels like it does come off the mask or a little bit easier. So when you're stretching it out, it doesn't have as much drag. So I do really like green frog tape for masking windows. I'm going to mask a slider right here. So you have the option of going up and pulling this direction. Or you can go down and fill in with paper. On a windy day like this, I could go, it's really hard. It feels like the wind's going this direction. If I went from top to bottom, pulled it that direction, it might work. But right now just masking in the wind. I like to just go from top to bottom. I'll fill in the bottom with paper. You know, and the bottom, right here, we're spraying this all one color to the bottom. I'll just hand roll it. So wind's picking up. We'll see how it goes. You're masking it with plastic now. I'm going to reach over, get that about a quarter of an inch. Got some wind picking up. See how this goes? I'm going to reach over, get this, within about a quarter of an inch. Hold it tight, snap it really quick. Get yourself a nice straight line torn. Press this down. Now I'm going to switch. Pull it down, figure out which way my wind is coming from. So it's far can't tell. So I'm going to come over here. We'll just go with this side, see what happens. So I'm going to pull it down, tack it. Depending on how windy, you'll tack it shorter distances. So it's on there. Wind's starting to pick up there. It's like that. Yeah, it looks like wind is blowing. You have this direction right now. See, I just take a piece of tape, pull it tight. See the way it wants to pick it up. Pull this down, pull it tight, like that. Things tight, I'm going to come over here, work with this side before it lifts it up. I'm going to grab this, tack it down. It's going to hold it, it's like that. The wind's going that direction. So I'm going to pull this down, take a piece of tape, and tack it down right here. Pull it down tight. We'll tack it all the way down the bottom. Wind's not too bad today. You see, I'll take this, just grab it, pull it, pull it tight. This line straight, now being a sliding glass door. The rest of that, you know, we've got spraying down here, spraying top. You know, if you're concerned about overspray on there, I can just run paper right here, hand roll the bottom, or I can just run another row of plastic and drop it down. I can run, if the wind is blowing this direction, I can run plastic this direction, do this. Now I can just take, it's like this, right there. Tack that right there. Just tuck this under right here. Now, if the masking isn't coming up, I'm trying to push it down to touch it on there. If you have to, just run another row. You get it to touch that plastic. Run this over here. We don't want overspray going down inside there. That's all protected. I'm going to come across the bottom, a hard time seeing the bottom, the cocking's white, the window's white. My eyesight's not good, getting old. One more row. So if I'd mass this 100%, then I can actually just spray that bottom and not actually have to brush and roll it. So it all depends on, you know, your preference, you know, what you think is faster. It's all looks good. It's like we've got a couple holes right there. So if you see any holes that your mask or blade poked in, just make sure you fill those in. Right here, this line. If you got any lines that need to be straightened up, just want to make sure that line is perfect. So now I can actually just shield that, shoot that bottom. That window is all masked 100%. So I've got one more scenario to mask, you know, with our plastic in the wind. It's going to, it's not too windy today. It's been kind of going up and down, but I'm going to be masking this door. This door has already been painted right here. I don't want to get overspray on the door. This door jam right here is going to be hand painted, hand brushed and rolled. So I'm just going to cover this up because I don't want to get overspray on the door itself. So I'm just going to drop plastic, you know, down this door. So just roughly, you know, wherever you can tack it to, the door jam, the primers all coming off. So the tape might have a hard time sticking down there, but I'll just fill it in with paper. You can see the wind picking up once the blow my masking away, but I'm not going to get frustrated. I can just grab it anywhere right here in the middle. So tack that down quickly before it starts blowing around again. I'll just tack that down, tack it down. Over here, the opposite side is already been painted. So I don't have to worry about that as much. Just tack that down right there. I'm going to tack this over here. See the winds blowing in around a little bit. It's all right. It's like that now that door is protected. We don't want anything down here getting on the door itself. We're going to just spray to this corner, and that's it. So that's where I would have my paper masker, typically have both maskers with me, paper masker. It's going to go on here just like this. Get down, and now that's going to protect that. I'll tack the paper down on the ground. This, tack it right here. Now that's going to protect it if you're concerned. Yo, with over spray, once again, if you're not, yo, has good with it, an airless sprayer, you're concerned about that. Once again, you can protect the whole entire thing if you want to. Throw some, tack some paper on there. You can tack this down right here. And now, yo, that's protected. So with the masking of windows, with plastic looks like in some mild wind.