Painters working on large elevated areas customarily utilize long-handled tools which obtain their paint from trays or buckets placed on the floor or on a scaffold, or receive them through hoses. These are suitable and accepted techniques for painting large areas. Similarly, at or near ground or floor levels, these techniques are widely used.
On smaller jobs, and especially at higher elevations where access to a floor level supply is not convenient, the painter takes the bucket up the ladder with him and places it on a platform of some kind. This, of course limits the range of the painter's efforts and when he needs to work on a more distant area, he must dismount the ladder, move it and the bucket, and start again.
These procedures are useful for larger, mostly rather plain, painting. However, they make it needlessly difficult for paint jobs of more artistic nature. Examples of such more complicated jobs are treatment of areas in which patterns of various colors, texture, or composition are needed, such as walls to be textured to appear as a cloudy sky, or which are to have an image such as a face or other physical objects.
For these jobs, which generally are smaller in size but which require greater skill and artistry, it is known for painters to hang a pail of paint from a tool belt, with the pail dangling freely from the belt. The painter dips the applicator into the pail. The term “applicator” is used herein to denote a handled tool for applying paint, of which brushes and rollers are the most commonly encountered examples. It is used to denote both kinds.
While this bucket is available to the painter on the ladder, it calls for considerable care in its use because the applicator and pail are independently supported. When he climbs the ladder, he must attend to both the bucket and the applicator, holding the applicator with one hand, holding on to the ladder with the other, and caring for the dangling pail. This is not only clumsy and potentially dangerous, but distracting to an artist. This invention frees a hand which otherwise would be holding the applicator.
In the most ordinary usage, care must be exerted to control drip from both the applicator and from the bucket, especially from and around the groove in the rim of the bucket. Otherwise the bucket and its surroundings can become messy, and control over the color is reduced. The absence of bucket stability in the sense of a close coupling of the painter's body and the bucket is a considerable disadvantage.
Further, known buckets do not provide specific means for wiping the applicator while it is being removed from the bucket with paint to be applied to a surface. This can result in excessive paint on the applicator, and dripping of paint from the applicator.
Another disadvantage of the known art is the need either to use a large number of buckets, or to clean up a single bucket when a different color is to be applied. For large walls this is no problem. However, for small jobs, and especially for multi-color jobs, this is a serious disadvantage.
It is an object of this invention to provide a paint holder (frequently called a “bucket”), with an integral stabilizer which abuts the painter's body over a substantial area to establish the location of the bucket relative to the painter.
It is another object of this invention to provide a drain from the rim groove of the bucket which will drain paint from the groove back into the bucket.
It is yet another object of this invention to provide a shaped liner with an outer wall complementary to the rim groove and preferably also with some of the inner wall of the bucket. This liner is removable, so it can protect the bucket from undesired paint, and also so as to be removable and replaceable to present paints of different colors.
It is yet another object of this invention to provide a liner with multiple cavities so as to carry a plurality of colors in one liner.
It is still another object of this invention to provide in this holder an applicator mount arranged so the painter can easily store and access the applicator. When stored, it is in a position to drain into the bucket. When the painter climbs the ladder, or otherwise does not need the applicator, it is held in a proper place, with its handle held by the mount, and with the applicator portion below a covering lid through which the handle passes.