Best Way to Paint a High House Exterior

A fresh paint job has the power to totally transform the wait of your business firm in less time and for less greenbacks than any other remodeling project.

That thin skin of resin and paint as well protects your investment, shielding it from sun, current of air, and pelting—until the paint begins to crack and peel, that is. Then it'southward time to button up with a couple of new coats.

How Long Does Exterior Pigment Concluding For?

Properly applied, new pigment should last for a good xv years, provided you use pinnacle-quality materials, apply them with intendance (and with an eye on the atmospheric condition), and, most of import, clean and sand every surface first.

How to Paint Your House

Is information technology time for a fresh coat? Here's what you need to know to get a beginning-form terminate on your dwelling house's exterior.

Wash

A thorough scrubbing is a must before painting any exterior surface. It removes the dirt and cleaved-down pigment residues that keep fresh coats from adhering and gets rid of mildew that grows on pigment in all but the most arid climates. Most contractors clean with force per unit area washers, but in the hands of someone unfamiliar with the equipment, these can gouge wood, shatter drinking glass, and drive water behind siding and trim. Using a hose, a pump sprayer, and a scrub castor is slower only safer, and just as constructive.

Before the scrubdown, protect nearby plants by misting their leaves and saturating the surrounding soil with h2o, pulling them away from the firm, and shrouding them in material drop cloths. (Plants will cook nether plastic.) Lay more drop cloths along the base of the walls to collect any falling paint debris.

Walls should be wet downwardly before getting scrubbed, then washed with a gallon of water mixed with 1 cup chlorine bleach and i cup of either a full-bodied, phosphate-free cleaner, such every bit a trisodium phosphate (TSP) substitute, or Jomax House Cleaner. Working in sections, from the lesser to the summit, will avoid streaks. Exist sure to rinse walls well before the solution dries. Forest siding and trim should be ready to paint afterward a mean solar day or two of dry weather.

Scrape, Part I

Paint that has peeled, bubbled, or blistered has got to go. But if lead is nowadays—a potent possibility in houses built before 1978—you need to continue with extra care. To lay any doubts to rest, you tin send pigment chip samples to a lab, such as Macs Lab'southward Dwelling house Free; for about $38, they'll give you a definitive answer.

If your pigment does contain lead, you'll need to take special precautions during the scraping and sanding phases to protect yourself, your family, and the surround from toxic dust. If the paint is lead-free, y'all need only don a dust mask and lay down tarps to catch debris earlier tackling the most crucial office of the project.

New Orleans contractor Joseph Wallis did apply a PaintShaver on this project to capture lead dust. This carbide-tipped angle grinder, which has a dust-collecting shroud that connects to a HEPA-filter vac, can be rented by mail from the manufacturer for about $50 a day.

Scrape, Part Ii

Scraping pigment by hand is a grueling task considering you've got to set on it from every management. But compared to power grinders and sanders, information technology'south the least damaging mode to remove the sometime layers. You tin can speed up the process by using a heating gun to soften the paint (equally shown).

Safety Get-go: Use a respirator when scraping paint past manus. Also, make sure y'all protect the surrounding work area—including any plants and shrubs—with a tarp covering.

Sand, Role I

With loose paint removed, it's fourth dimension to pace back and appraise what remains. If well-nigh of the paint still adheres well and it's not likewise bumpy, the boundary betwixt the paint and the bare woods can exist smoothed with 50- or 80-grit sandpaper.

Sand, Part Two

Small random-orbit or pad sanders brand this task go faster. (Wallis first covers these boundaries with Synkoloid patching chemical compound and so no edge is visible after sanding.) Equally shown, you want to make certain that there is a feathered, smooth transition from exposed wood to old pigment. For areas that might get close scrutiny, y'all can follow upwardly with a 100- or 120-grit rubdown to erase any scratches.

If less than half the old paint is left, however, information technology may be worth stripping it all off. Guertin gets rid of stubborn remnants using shrouded grinders (like the PaintShaver), infrared paint strippers (such as the Speedheater), or chemical strippers (like Multi-Strip), then smooths the forest with a course or 2 of sanding. When siding (or banking concern accounts) can't take the stupor of a total strip job, Rich O'Neil, of Masterwork Painting in Bedford, Massachusetts, has successfully hidden rough, well-adhered paint under Peel Bail, a thick primer.

Safe Offset: When using a random-orbit sander, be sure to protect yourself from decline with a respirator. For sanding by paw, a dust mask will do.

Patch and Fill

Later the sanding is done, it's time to fill minor cracks and dents, repair whatsoever rot, and replace whatsoever pieces that are too far gone. (Wholesale replacement of wood siding or trim will probable require a carpenter.)

O'Neil patches shallow holes and divots with Ready Patch because information technology dries fast, sands polish, and stays flexible. Deep cracks and rotten spots are best repaired with 2-step epoxies, such as those made past Advanced Repair Technology. (For a stride-past-footstep instructions, see Repairing Rot with Epoxy.) The days of using polyester auto-body fillers on forest are over. "They cure besides hard," says Portland, Oregon–based painting contractor Kathleen George. "They expect good at first, just then they peel away."

Hold off on caulking the cracks until everything has been primed. "Primer protects the wood when—not if—the caulk fails," says O'Neil.

Prime, Part I

Primers are formulated to penetrate, seal, and provide a good surface for the elevation coats to stick to. Use them over bare wood, Spackle, and epoxy, or over paint with a chalky, deteriorated surface. (If the paint surface is clean and sound, you can skip the priming step.)

Acrylic primers can be used on most surfaces, but on cedar or redwood, oil-based coatings are a must because they lock in these woods' red-brown "extractives," which will leach out and leave behind rusty stains if the wood is primed with a water-based production.

Painters often tint primer close to the color of the top coat, but Wallis thinks that's a recipe for "holidays," or missed spots. Instead, he tints his primer a contrasting color. "If I can see the color coming through, I know I demand to apply more paint," he says. On the cottage shown in this story, he chose a grey-blue primer to get nether a peach height coat.

If primer is sprayed on, "back-brushing" information technology immediately by hand volition work the coating into every crack and fissure.

Prime, Role Two

Tip: Spray exposed nailheads with a metal primer to forestall rust from bleeding through the paint.

Caulk

When the primer is dry, caulk all small joints (less than ¼-inch-broad) in the siding and trim. Nigh pros use siliconized acrylics—paint won't stick to directly silicones—but Guertin and O'Neil like the new, more expensive urethane acrylics for their greater flexibility and longevity. O'Neil stresses that it's shortsighted to skimp on caulk. "If the articulation fails, you're dorsum to square one." Guertin uses the lifetime rating as his quality guide. "I don't expect 35-year caulk will terminal 35 years, but it should final longer than a 15-year caulk."

Paint, Role I

Deciding which paint to apply has gotten much easier at present that acrylic latexes take pushed oil-based paints nearly to extinction. The acrylics offering superior performance (they don't harden with age, the manner oils do, and so they move and exhale without baking), they don't mildew equally readily, and they emit fewer VOCs, so they comply with new air-quality regulations. They likewise work over both oil- and water-based primers.

Oil paint however has a identify in high-traffic areas such as wood steps and porch floors considering of its superior wearable resistance, and on steel and cast-atomic number 26 railings, which do good from oil's water repellency.

Paint, Part 2

The last big decision is how to apply the pigment. Well-nigh pros use paint sprayers because they're fast, but in inexperienced hands a high-powered sprayer tin can get out drips, sparse coats, and a mist that may land on many things other than your siding.

If you lot practise hire a painter who uses a sprayer, make sure he is meticulous nearly removing, covering, or masking off everything in the area that might go hitting with overspray: gutters, roofs, windows, shrubbery, walkways, cars—you name it.

Once you choose a paint brand, the pros advise against additives, such as mildewcides. Simply they will add conditioners such as Floetrol (for latex) or Penetrol (for oils) to boring drying times in hot atmospheric condition and so brush and lap marks don't show, and to brand paint more sprayable.

Pigment, Part 3

Every painting job develops a unique choreography equally ladders go up and come downwardly and tarps are unrolled and folded up. But two basic principles remain:

Start at the top and work down.
Work in the shade, out of the sun's glare.

As the trip the light fantastic toe proceeds, keep an eye on the conditions. Rain can wash freshly practical latex right off the wall, and a temperature dip below fifty degrees F ii days later on application can interfere with adhesion and curing and ho-hum the sheen of sleeky paints. (Latexes like Sherwin-Williams'south Duration and Benjamin Moore'southward MoorGard Low Lustre are formulated to tolerate temps as low every bit 35 and 40 degrees, respectively.)

What Practise I Need to Paint My House?

Practice-it-yourselfers are best off using a castor for maximum control. You lot may cease up with a better quality job, to kicking. Says Kathleen George, "With a brush, I know that I've inspected every square inch of a firm." Mini rollers speed application on clapboards and trim just should be followed immediately with a castor.

Whichever application method you end up using, the pros are universal in their insistence that ii tiptop coats are always amend than 1. Says O'Neil, "It's ane of the real secrets of a long-lasting pigment job."

frostsquithrilve52.blogspot.com

Source: https://www.thisoldhouse.com/painting/21018466/how-to-paint-your-home-s-exterior