YOUR HOME
Taking the pain out of painting by Jennifer Read
There isn’t a homeowner who doesn’t understand the eternal endeavor of painting. Familiar to many are the struggles of trying to paint a surface while juggling a paint can and maintaining one’s balance on a ladder. Several have experienced the painful arm contortions required to apply paint in a precise, neat manner. An unhappy majority has scrubbed hardened paint off clothes and wooden brushes. Luckily, two South Coast residents have found solutions to these annoyances. The Right Brush While many ideas for inventions come from hours of thinking and praying for the proverbial light bulb to appear, Mark Wholey accidentally invented The Right Brush. When a paintbrush he was using broke, he used masking tape to hold it together at a right angle. When he continued painting with his newly masking-taped paintbrush, Wholey said it felt “strangely comfortable.” After doing some research, Wholey was surprised to find that a similar paintbrush had not yet been invented. “I couldn’t believe there hadn’t already been a brush invented like this, but there was nothing anywhere,” said Wholey, “Right after putting together that broken brush, I made a prototype and a drawing and filed it with the U.S. Patent Office.” Wholey says the process of attaining a
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September 2009 / The South Coast Insider
patent is not as intimidating as it sounds. “I recommend anyone who has a decent idea to try to get a patent. You can get one fairly easily if you follow the steps that the U.S. Patent Office tells you.” Wholey received a design patent after tweaking his invention for about a year with the help of the U.S. Patent Office. “The people there are responsive, patient, and have been very nice. If there’s a mistake in the design, they help you to resolve it.” The final design for the paintbrush included a white plastic handle attached to high-quality bristles at a right angle. It comes in one size and one style as a 21/2 angled cut brush. It also features a hook on its corner that allows it to be hung on the inside or outside of a paint can for efficient cleaning or storage. The easy-to-clean plastic handle has contours made for the