FrogTape Multi-Surface

FROG TAPE WHAT IS IT?

In effect Frog Tape is an advanced form of masking tape, primarily used for painting and decorating – where straight, clean lines are desired between one surface finish and another.

It is manufactured by an American company, Shurtape Technologies, LLC, who have been manufacturing various tapes since 1955, and, more recently, patented their PaintBlock™ Technology system.

Theoretically it seals the edges of the tape when paint (usually emulsion) is applied over the tape – at least that is the manufacturers claim! In this review, RICHADA sets out to see if that claim holds water (maybe that should better be paint!) and if this “premium brand” masking tape is worth paying the considerable price premium for.

RICHADA A BRIEF DIY HISTORY

I have been a keen, if intermittent, painter and decorator from an early age. At the tender age of 15, I was taught almost all I know by a family friend; we’ll call him Tommy – himself a keen DIY enthusiast, an electrician by trade. Unlike Tommy, who specialised in wallpapering, I quickly found a fondness for painting over said wallpaper, usually in that era - we are talking about the late 70’s here – glorious anaglypta, possibly better known to you as woodchip, very outdated these days. By the time I was 18, I had decorated an entire chalet bungalow.

In those distant days I was young and keen and blessed with an extraordinarily good eye, and a steady hand, for a straight line, a spin off from doing fine modelling detail work from the age of about 10.

However, as the years have progressed I have found that both eyes and hands need all the help that modern technology can offer. In those days I only ever used masking tape for spraying model ship hulls and (real!) car bodies – when it came to decorating, clean, straight lines were always achieved by eye.

DECORATING TO A DEAD-(STRAIGHT)LINE

The passing of thirty years and a deadline imposed by someone else, the builder, for getting our new kitchen decorated had me needing to achieve the near impossible, a professional finish in a hurry! Making matters worse, was that my dear wife had chosen a very strong blue colour for the kitchen walls – in very sharp contrast to the brilliant white ceiling. I thought about, and due to the shape of the room rejected the idea of, using coving around the wall / ceiling join. Additionally, due to the fact that the builder was going to install the kitchen units in less than a week, I really didn’t have time on my side to be cutting, fitting and then painting coving. Both here on Ciao, and in various DIY stores I had read about and seen a new product – Frog Tape – without a second thought, along with said brilliant white ceiling matt emulsion and blue wall paint I picked up from B&Q my first “canister” of Frog Tape.

Unlike traditional masking tape, Frog Tape is not simply sold on a roll with a cardboard backer. Shuretape explain that the plastic container is needed to protect the treated edges of the tape. They also reassure users that It is fully recyclable, but urge you to keep it and use it for odds and ends, which is exactly what I intend to do with mine.

Only after I got home did it occur to me that £7.98 was an awful lot of money to pay for what, looks like, mere masking tape! The other thing, not considered at the time, was that I was applying this tape to brand new plasterwork – Frog Tape had just launched a yellow “Fresh Plaster” tape to their range, only B&Q did not have it – I saw it in Homebase a week after finishing the kitchen, I have purchased some to use upstairs in the new rooms, but so far cannot give you my impressions of it. This review then is of the original, green Frog Tape.

LET’S GET IT STUCK UP

My initial criticism of this product is that, as purchased, it is supplied with totally inadequate instructions. It is bad, on the manufacturers’ part, to expect everyone to go online to read about such a product and how to use it when you simply want to get on and do the job. In my case I started reading about it online at work, AFTER applying the tape to the freshly (dry 24 hours) painted kitchen ceiling. What I read did not make me very happy, many said that they had done the same thing and ended up totally repainting, and in some cases re-plastering, their ceiling as it pulled all the paint and big lumps of plaster down with it.

Applying the Frog Tape turned out to be a joint venture between Mrs R and I. We quickly found that applying long runs of it at a time simply did not work – you just could not get a long straight edge. We ended up applying strips of about eighteen inches in length, making sure that there was about an inch overlap. Internal corners have to be very carefully applied too – although external ones are much easier.

Our kitchen is an “L” shape roughly 3 metres by 4.25 metres into the L (10’ x 14’) and it took the two of us around an hour to fully Frog Tape around the ceiling, back breaking work it was too thanks to the concentration required to get it just right.

THE PROFESSIONAL DECORATOR’S VIEW

Our builder (let’s call him) Bob, before becoming a builder, was a professional decorator – his father, who works with him, is a Master Decorator. Neither had previously used, or actually seen used, Frog Tape. Both thought it an outrageously expensive product and were highly sceptical about it: a) providing a bleed-free straight edge, and b) being removable without causing substantial damage to the new ceiling. Indeed, to prove his point, Bob, could not resist giving a section of my Frog tape a pull – and to prove his point the paint, but not the plaster, came away from the ceiling on it.

This was the point at which I started doing some serious internet research on this product and discovered just how mixed the results could be. However, I drew the conclusion from all of my research that those either ham-fisted, or attempting to do the job in too much of a hurry were the ones (pardon the awful pun here) coming unstuck.

THREE DAYS AND TWO COATS OF PAINT LATER......GENTLY DOES IT!

We approached the removal of the Frog tape quite differently having read what I had online. Unlike Bob (the builder) we took a very gentle, slow and steady approach to it. He had suggested scoring, with a knife, along the edge of the tape. I tried this, but it was so awkward in the 90 degree corner angle between the wall and ceiling that, having stopped doing it, I found that if the peeling technique was correct, scoring it first was simply not necessary.

Most important is that you peel at 90 degrees to the stuck tape – fortunately the tape being on the ceiling, this can then be a straight down movement. Slowly but steadily, wrapping about two inches at a time back on itself we worked our way right around the room. Apart from the paint peeled off by Bob, a very small area came away on the other side of the room, both were easily touched up with the white ceiling emulsion.

Incidentally the manufacturers suggest that the tape should be removed within a twenty-one day period - seven days if positioned in direct sunlight. My recommendation would be to remove it as soon as possible, preferably before the last coat of paint has dried. This is what happened in the bathroom where, unlike in the kitchen, none of the paintwork at all pealed away with the tape.

.....AND? THE RESULT?

My wife and I stood back and admired our joint effort. I conceded that even at 18, I would not have managed to achieve such a straight line with a brush alone. Unlike any other masking tape that I have ever used there was virtually no bleeding whatsoever – in the one place where it had occurred, that was thanks to slightly uneven plasterwork, which I had missed when filling the holes and cracks elsewhere.

The huge advantage here though was one of time saved. Rather than having to concentrate, in poor light (it was March) on achieving a straight, even, edge with a small brush, I had been able to cut quickly into the main rolled walls, saving several hours AND had a far better end result too.

Grudgingly, at the end of the job, both builder and decorator father had to concede that they could not have made such a straight line between wall and ceiling.

Kitchen conclusion, Frog Tape - £7.98 well spent!

THAT’S JUST THE KITCHEN! WHERE ELSE HAS HE USED IT?

We undertook an enormous project at the start of this year, the kitchen proving to be only a small part of the conversion of our two bedroom bungalow, effectively, into a four bedroom house. The conversion included a new shower room downstairs, a bathroom and two bedrooms upstairs, plus a new front porch.

The downstairs shower room had been the first room to receive our attentions – before the fitment of the shower itself, following the (professional) tiling of the walls, we had to paint the ceiling. Unfortunately this was done before the wonders of Frog Tape had made themselves aware to us, this, the smallest room in our house took forever as we painted the edge of the plastered ceiling up to the tiles – grouting more accurately - by hand. Again, Bob told us that he would not have done better, I am a bit of a perfectionist and was less happy (than in the kitchen later) with the finish achieved.

THE BATHROOM

Our upstairs bathroom was tiled and fitted out before we had the chance to seal or paint the bare plaster ceiling there. This was the one room – thanks to its partially sloping ceiling - that I was dreading painting. Being a wet room, we had chosen to fully tile all of the walls, just leaving the ceiling in need of paint, although, with said sloping ceiling coming down to just above bath height on one side of the room, there is quite a lot of it.

Referring to Frog Tape’s own website, I was not optimistic of achieving a great finish around the edge of the ceiling. Obviously grout is a very rough material and I was convinced that the matt white emulsion paint would bleed back under the Frog tape. However, painting straight edges – especially on some of the peculiar angles involved in this case, looked like being impossible to me.

It took me several weeks to pluck up the courage to Frog Tape up the bathroom tiles and grout and then another few days to finally start painting. Fortunately I now had the experience of the kitchen to go on, which actually proved invaluable. However, until unpeeling the Frog tape at the end of the job, I still was not confident of doing a good job here.

Obviously peeling it off of the tiles and grout there was no danger of destroying the wall surface in this case. Against all expectations and as witnessed by the photographs below, Frog Tape gave us a clean, bleed free, finish, apart from in one corner, where it had proven impossible to adhere the tape properly to the grout.

Bathroom result: Frog Tape exceeded all expectations, making the impossible achievable!

THE PORCH

Surface number three here – this time I am using Frog Tape on the floor, to protect precious Karndean floor tiles from oil based gloss paint.

With Bob, our builder, going to work so quickly, there was not time allowed to decorate between jobs, as it happened, the skirting boards were put into the porch after the Karndean tiles had been laid by the flooring contractor. With a perfectly level floor - the skirting boards fitted very snugly to it – another decorating challenge for Frog Tape.

A less than perfect result here, maybe the oil based, gloss, paint is more aggressive in its seepage (bleeding) powers, but here there were signs of bleed onto the tiles, which required the services of a razor to remove. Once again though a far better job than I would have managed using ordinary masking tape – or indeed doing it “freehand”.

Porch floor result: Not perfect but a lot better than the alternatives.

WHAT NEXT?

I currently have Frog Tape stuck up in the hall upstairs. An unusual application this, the white ceiling meets a couple of structural wooden beams, which I am staining to match the wooden staircase. This is work in progress, but I am confident that Frog Tape will prove ideal for this task – the angles involved here mean that I do not even need to cut in with a brush, the Frog Tape allowing me to roll right over the edge of the wooden beam.

Following that there are three bedrooms to be decorated, somewhere in that process I will get to try the yellow – New Plaster – tape. In truth, if handled carefully, the original green Frog Tape will do all you need it to and on any surface that I have tried it on.

CONCLUSION

This is an expensive product and not suitable for those in a tearing hurry. However, for keen amateurs like myself, who care about how a finished job looks, the extra time and expense in using Frog Tape is handsomely repaid elsewhere – both in time saved on the job and in the final satisfaction of seeing a job well done.

I would urge Shurtape to include far more comprehensive instructions with their tape, if used correctly it is an excellent product – in the wrong hands, or for those who have not taken the trouble to read a little about it, it will prove an expensive – and damaging – waste of time.

Personally speaking, having now discovered the benefits, my decorating kit would never be without, at least, the green Frog Tape – treat this Frog with respect and he’ll repay you handsomely.

(c) RICHADA CIAO 17.07.2012