About a year ago the blogosphere was all abuzz about FrogTape, a new painters’ tape product with paint-blocking technology purported to stop paint from bleeding under the tape. With that in mind, the point of the tape was to ensure straight, clean, professional paint lines to assist with nearly every kind of paint project imaginable. Well, it took just about as long for FrogTape to appear in our local home improvement stores (that happens when you live in Ohio, more often than you’d think) and we’re here to give you our thoughts on it.
As you may or may not be aware, we paint A LOT in our house. Nearly every surface has been touched, and we’re nowhere near done yet. So when we first heard about FrogTape we were pretty intrigued about the possibilities.
We used the tape for painting trim around a window and a doorway — we were painting the trim deep teal and both areas had white we wanted to maintain, so we thought this would be the perfect opportunity to give the product our full attention.
Pros
This might seem silly, but we were really appreciative of FrogTape’s lime green color. We had taped off some other trim with the standard blue painter’s tape on the other side of the room, and since we were using such a similar color of paint, the blue tape easily disappeared under a single coat of paint. The FrogTape, however, shone through the paint in excellent contrast.
Another thing we liked was, well, for the most part, it worked. According to the website it’s supposed to stand up to 21 days of hanging or 7 in direct sunlight. We had both going on, and admittedly we kept the tape up more like all summer due to several coats of paint needed to achieve the correct shade and trying to balance this project with about a million others, on top of our two kids. We saw only a couple of places where there was bleed-through (bleed-under?) and one was definitely because the tape folded and puckered at that spot.
Cons
We’re not sure if this was due to how many coats of paint we required, but we had to do some serious scoring to get the edge of the tape to release at the seams. If we missed a spot scoring, when we pulled on the tape to remove it, paint came with it. So we still had touching up to do after all the tape was up, mostly in the opposite way you’re used to with painter’s tape.
Also, we did notice that when the tape was used to wrap around exterior corners, it tore a bit at the seam and was a pain to get a corner up again. It wasn’t more than a couple of extra minutes’ time to remedy, but still, when you’re working with two toddlers at your feet, time is of the essence.
All in all, we’re pretty impressed with FrogTape and are looking forward to testing it in other capacities before making a final verdict on it.
Photo courtesy of Frog Tape via Facebook
No Comments