When you paint do you personally prefer to paint over outlet covers and switch covers or do you mask it off
>>978869
What the fuck
Try just taking the fucking plate off and not hamhanding it?
>>978869
I take the plate off.
>>978869
Its 1 fucking screw.
I couldn't fucking stand living in shitty apartments. Every fucking one, from the $500 to the $2000 townhouse I rented had this bullshit.
![painted_over_electrical-out[1].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/qXnekUZ.jpg "painted_over_electrical-out[1].jpg")
>>978885
>Who can't take 5 seconds to remove a trim plate?
The lowest bidder who gets paid by the job. This is typical in rentals.
>>978869
Take the plate off.
Why would people not do this?
>>978869
/diy/ needs to spend more time on /b/. This would've been called out on there for what it is within three posts.
BAIT
You take the fucking plate off wtf
>>978916
And then it would devolve into a trap thread.
>>978916
It seems that way but all the outlets in my grandmothers living room have 3 layers of paint on them dating back from the 50s. My original pic was from her house
>>978872
Just make sure to put the plate back on while the paint is still wet. So it sticks and the next person to take it off tears the wallboard.
>>978916
Have you been to /b/ recently? Any time anyone starts a thread with 'Christianity, Atheism, Veganism' or any other sensitive topic to them you'll get 300 replies no problem, people on /b/ are the easiest to bait these days.
>>978869
You take the fucking plate off, you mong
>>978869
why would you mask it off? take the fucking plate off and then put a strip of blue tape over the outlet... roller right over the fucking hole...
>>979012
>people on /b/ are the easiest to bait these days.
Shit yes. I remember working hard in the early days to get good troll threads going. Best one was a bad math thread and another a standard vs metric thread.
>>978904
>The lowest bidder who gets paid by the job
As opposed to the medium bidder who happens upon random free money ?
>>978869
remove the powerplug you monkey
>>978947
I use a knife just to remove such niggered on plates
>>979035
Also, replace those Nema 1 receptacles with bonded (grounded) outlets. If no bond is present, GFCI the first one, then replace the rest with normal outlets
>>979036
>paying for someone else's repairs
>>978869
REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
>>979019
This. Except I'd be cheap and just use regular old masking tape instead of the blue stuff.
>>979040
Somewhere in the thread he said it was his grandmother
>>979050
You'd be surprised how many painters use masking tape instead of "painters" tape.
>>979029
As opposed to the median bidder who didnt get payed for the job
>blue tape
Do you all have tourettes or alcoholic tremors? You can brush around these without getting paint on them. I've cut in thousands of these over the years and probably 100 miles of trim and I've never used tape. The first ten on my first day in the job required that I wipe them off a little, but after that you have it mastered.
Very annoying to see that every motherfucker out there automatically assumes they can paint just because they can dip a brush in a can. If I can hammer a nail, does that make me a carpenter?
>>978869
My landlord likes to paint over the outlet covers, which I promptly sand down to the original wood for a e s t h e t i c reasons.
>>979091
>job
Take a breath, Anon.
This is /diy/, not /job/. Nobody here is doing this for a living.
>>979282
LOL
i find it disgusting when i see it painted. fucking plebs.
>>978869
I love it when when those douchebags do that shit. Last few apartments I've lived in, the switch covers were the absolute least of my worries. They painted over the coax cable outlets, Last place, of the 6 doors in the shithole, I could only get one of them shut all the way because of how much paint built up in the jambs. The baseboards had so many coats on them that they didn't even look like baseboards anymore... just looked like little bulges at the bottom of the wall.
I don't even think that stuff is fixable, short of removing all the trim and skim coating the walls.
>>979305
>I don't even think that stuff is fixable
never heard of a heat gun? it turns paint into warm butter, so you can just scoop it off.
>>979327
It also turns plastic outlet covers into warm butter
>>978869
>>978869
What kind of low-level troll is this?
>>978885
8 different apartments in Dallas and 3 in Lubbock texas.
Like I said, one was even a $2k a month townhouse, and I think they just came in and painted the walls, had paint over ever outlet, coax, Ethernet, lightswitch, whatever.
>The model obviously didn't have these problems and I moved out within 2 months.
>>979036
Illeagal. If no ground, each receptacle has to be a gfci.
>>979375
How pricey was breaking that lease ?
>>979091
This. The rest of you suck at painting, just cut around it when you do the rest of your edges. Stop giving advice when you don't know what you are talking about. If you have Parkinson's or something or are just to stupid to figure out a paintbrush just pay someone who can to do it.
>>979411
>90% of painters alcoholic, sub 100 IQ
I'm not sure what you were expecting.
>>979395
It was bad, had a year lease, but I'd break it again or preferably never move there. That was without a doubt the shittiest place I've ever lived, and cost even more than my badass house's mortgage+home insurance+taxes.
A month and a half of rent plus a few hundred in assorted bullshit fees and then the cable company fucked us a little too.
We found a decent house with a friend a little outside of Dallas for $400 a month that we stayed at for a year to recoup the cost.
>The complexes name was the brownstones in north Dallas.
>>979417
I'm well aware of that, and don't expect much at all. Those dumbass alcoholic painters still know how to cut in. If you can't do what they can I have bad news for you...
>>979029
No, as opposed to the higher bidder whose contractors get paid a salary
>>978869
>ungrounded
>>978869
>paint over
I bet you leave your dirty underwear out on your bedroom floor for days too ya scruff.
>>979429
>If you can't do what they can I have bad news for you...
What bad news is that? Is it that the 15 seconds it takes to remove one screw and a cover is less than the time added for non professional painters to carefully cut in?
We're talking /diy/ here, why are you raging as if you're the guy paying people to work slowly?
Here's your (You)
>>979387
I should have said "first one in the circuit". If the rest on the circuit's receptacles are on the load side of the gfci then they are protected
>>979012
people actually still go on that board? quit that shit after the first week
>>979593
Right over your head, the whole point is if you are painting a room, you will be doing edges anyway. May as well just do these at the same time. Won't take any longer than taking them off if you are at all competent. Also, how could you assume I am raging? Calling people out for being dumbasses isn't out of rage, its for amusement.
>>979618
>people actually still go on that board?
>fastest board on 4chan
>threads 404 in hours
>threads on /diy/ 404 in weeks
>threads on /gd/ 404 in months
Yeah, I think some people still go there.
>>978869
Only a communist scum and the true lazy would paint over an outlet cover
My landlord is a lazy piece of shit and there's paint all over the outlet cover plates, door hinges, trims, and window edges. I fucking hate this place and I can't wait until I can finally move to my own place.
>>978923
spiderman*
>>979595
I've been in houses where people like you have worked. It is a nice idea in theory, but Joe the handyman comes in and slaps a GFCI in and one day it trips or just fails, causing electric to be lost to hallway sconces, part of the kitchen, dining room lights, and a few other things. Then the customer, who bought the house not even knowing their was a GFCI in the living room, spends a lot of money on labor time for us diagnosing and finding where the electric stopped on that particular circuit. In old homes, especially knob and tube, always line each GFCI installed. You never know what else was picked up on the load end.
As for OP, I hope you are a troll, but I know you people are out there. I have had to razor knife around many outlet covers that have decades of paint jobs over them. It is one small 6/32 screw and takes mere seconds to remove unless another piece of shit has already painted over it in the first place.
>>978869
>mask it off
unscrew it from the fucking wall so you can paint behind it how hard is that
Every place I've ever lived in was like this. Paint on paint on paint on paint on paint.
Paint so fucking thick you can barely discern the door hingers. Paint over every outlet cover, lightswitch panel, etc. Paint over the breaker box. Paint on the light fixtures.
These people don't give a shit. They're mexicans / natives that work in teams and get paid by the hour. They just come in with a bucket of paint and slop it all over fucking everything as quick as they can so they can sit around and fuck off looking at youtube videos on their phones for the rest of their shift because they got the required number of units done that day.
>>981174
It's the people that hire them that don't give a shit.
>>981165
I'm an electrician. The way I said to do it is legal. No one wants to pay me to put in 10 times as many GFCIs if I do not have to. If they did I'd just rewire the circuit with a bond and be done with it
>>981178
>The way I said to do it is legal.
Just because you can doesn't mean you should. This scenario of needing a 3 prong outlet usually presents itself in old homes, many of which are wired off of knob and tube. That scenario I gave above was real. I am an electrician too and we were the second company called out to work on that old house. The other reputable company couldn't figure it out and recommended us. At that location someone with your ideology slapped in a GFCI and lined/loaded it. It is fine to do IF and only IF you know what is on the load side. Unless you wired the house originally or you had the outlets out of the wall and checked continuity between the wires and did everything in your power to know only outlets nearby are protected you should line each GFCI. If they want 3 prong outlets those are the options-run a new circuit or put a GFCI in. If cost is a deterrent then put one or two in each room where they want it-by a computer desk or at a tv center.
The code is "practical safeguarding". Volumes of common sense should be applied. Don't GFCI protect refrigerators, freezers, garage door openers, and sump pumps. You want those things to always have electric and not at the mercy of a plug packed with sensitive electronic equipment prone to failure.
>>978869
I've mainly seen that in older homes (central USA, homes older than 75 years or so, both rural and urban)
when they upgraded the wiring from knob & tube, they didn't bother to rewire all the sockets--they just left some unrewired and unconnected.
then they paint over the unconnected ones to make it easy to tell that the socket won't work.
the ones that DO work are masked off properly.
"yes anon but why not just rewire all the sockets?!?!?"
welp because that costs more money, especially when the socket was totally ancient, and the faceplate and socket were some odd shape that normal faceplates and sockets won't fit into. so they would have had to pay to replace the socket and faceplate as well as the rewiring to it, which can be a bitch in ancient brick walls that had the original wiring strung during the house's construction.
~~~~~~~~~
if I saw painted-over outlets in a *new* house, I'd think it was extremely odd or extremely incompetent.
>>978869
Remove the cover, cut in around the outlet, roll up to the point you cut in, replace the cover.
Never use masking tape while painting, that shit is for amateurs.
>>978869
As someone born and raised in the soviet union and having seen painted-over mains sockets and door and window handles and even apartment door peepholes everywhere, I had this illusion that such atrocities never happen in the civilized world. But they do, I've seen quite some with my own eyes and this thread delivers some fine examples too.
Still, this story beats anything else ever seen:
>http://bash.im/quote/414283
>Bohme: The other day I happened to go to the restroom at the students' club of our university. It has high ceiling, some 5-6 meters high at least.
>Bohme: On the ceiling there's a vent intake as it should be. And there's a toilet brush stuck into it. I wouldn't even wonder how and why and who did it. We have plenty of talented people around. BUT THE FACT THAT IT HAD BEEN SPRAYPAINTED OVER TOGETHER WITH WALLS AND CEILINGS just made me die a little X_x
>Bohme: Art performance, up yours!
>>979091
so mad. Why not just pop it off instead of wasting all that effort
>>982740
>It is fine to do IF and only IF you know what is on the load side.
I wouldn't be a very good electrician if I couldn't figure that out. Most of the time our inspectors want to see bonded wire run to a 1110 with a gfci protecting the unbonded anyway circuit anyway.
>>979346
and babies
>>978869
fuck you. don't paint over your outlets. don't do it. stop doing it. stop inciting people to do this.
>>979091
How does it feel knowing your entire livelihood revolves around making things a different color and most people prefer to do it themselves?
fucking kill me now
>>979517
This. I fucking cringed.
>>978947
you are a true hero
>>978869
>When you paint do you personally prefer to paint over outlet covers and switch covers
Only an asshole would do this.
>>979091
lol painters acting like a retarded 6 year old can't do their job.
>>978869
I understand that they hire cheap labor and they don't give a shit, but if it was my home (rental or otherwise) I'd rather pay a little bit more, have it done correctly, then when it's time to sell, the next guy doesn't come in and see a shit paint job or you have to pay another guy even more to replace every damn cover in the house. Heck you could find a kid off the street, give him a screwdriver and $10 to go through the house and remove every [clean] cover before the painters come. "come back in 2 days and I'll give you another 10 to put them back on" or just do it yourself ffs, it's 1 screw!
>>984313
It's painting. If you don't do it yourself I don't see why you are on this board...
Oh my fuck, I've got to find my pictures of this place
About a year ago I was asked by my neighbor to lay some vinyl tile flooring in a shithole apartment that he rents out to the aspiring meth-heads of the town. He said he hired a painter to spray the entire place before I went to install flooring over the old shitty rolled vinyl that was in every room.
I walk in and expect paint all over the floor, naturally because I was just laying new flooring over the old...BUT not only did he spray over every fucking switch plate and outlet cover, HE SPRAYED THE FUCKING CEILING FAN IN EVERY ROOM. This was 4 bedrooms and a kitchen worth of ceiling fans. He did take the time to remove the lightbulbs and glass shades though. White walls, white trim, white ceiling, white fan blades and body....like a klansmans fucking dream home. I was amazed he didnt just spray over the god damn windows too.
>>984341
It's understandable but I absolutely loathe 2 things, painting and drywall finishing. Those are the only two side jobs I will not take unless I have to, or I could've done the shitshow job that I witnessed with >>984341. I'd rather rip out lathe and plaster for a week than spend 2 days painting or mudding and taping.
>>978869
Invest in a rapid dive... Eats wallplates for breakfast!
