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An Outline of the Exterior Painting Process

  • By Wall 2 Wall Painting & Services
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  • 15 Jul, 2017
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Painting the exterior of your home can be a big job, but it’s a job that has to be done. The benefits of painting your home though are well worth it; with an immediate boost of curb appeal and improved extended protection for your home from the elements. For a small price, you can easily make your home look like it’s brand new again.
A good paint job requires knowledge, careful preparation and attention to every little detail. Even a small home can require countless hours for proper preparation and immaculate execution. Even seemingly unimportant things like the weather have to be taken in to account.
You’ve got to be able to work confidently on and move around tall ladders, have the patience not to rush and a steady hand. Luckily for you and most other homeowners, you have the option to hire professionals to do all the work for you and give you one less thing to worry about.
DIY is not a bad thing in any case, but an exterior paint job is one that’s totally different from an exterior paint job. Here any mistakes can be seen by any passerby on the street and they can be more costly to make. Another thing to note is that doing an exterior paint job on your home by yourself is going to take a lot longer than it would a team of experienced professionals.
Whether you want to do it yourself, hire someone else to do it or just know how a good paint job is generally done, we’ve got you covered. This article will walk you through a quality paint job from beginning to end.

Cleaning

Your first step of preparation when it comes to an exterior painting job is obviously to choose your paint and gather your tools. If you hire professionals, you don’t need to worry about the tool part. But the initial step after this, and one of the most important is to clean the exterior of the house. Giving it a good pressure washing will remove any loose paint chips, dirt, grease, mold or grime. A garden hose is not going to do the type of cleaning that you need.
With generous amounts of eco-friendly home cleaners (to make sure the exterior truly gets cleaned), pressure wash the area to be painted in small sections and soak them thoroughly, starting at the ground and working your way up. Let it sit a moment to soak in, but not long enough to dry, before you rinse it all off again, working this time from the top on down.
Expect to get wet and expect to give the house ample time to dry. The washing isn’t a blast, but it is a crucial step.

Removing Paint

Pressure washing your home should remove a lot of the older flaky paint chips, but it’s not as easy as that and the next step is kind of monotonous. You’ll need a large curved scraper or blade and a smaller one for tighter, more detailed work.  Here you scrape, scrape and scrape. Occasionally you’ll use a putty knife to grab paint your scrapers can’t get at or a hammer to push in or pull out loose nails.
The point of scraping is to remove all of the loose, unbonded paint, so ignore paint that is still sticking; often the only way to remove that kind of paint is to damage the surface, which is not what you want to do. Go with the grain with pressure, and lightly scrape against the grain after.
Realistically you aren’t going to be able to remove all of the paint yourself. That’s fine, there’s nothing wrong with that. Professionals or renovators should be able to or at least have the knowledge of how much to remove to provide the best available paint job.

Repairs

This is the part where you stop worrying about the paint and try to make sure you have a smooth surface before you start trying to apply your primer or paint. The craters and cracks and what not in your exterior walls from the years of weathering, the lack of protection from the old paint, or the result of you getting frustrated as you scrap, will need to be filled in and blended back in to the rest of the wall. So get out your siding spackle and trowel.
You’ll need to make sure you have exterior grade filler so that it will dry to withstand the elements. With your various putty knives, you’ll want to fill everything and anything in but don’t use too much or it’s just more work for you having to sand it off later. Let it dry and then come back and sand it later. Make sure you’ve got all of the visible areas especially taken care of and then you should be good to go. This is also a good time to see to any other potential trouble spots.

Prime

While you’re at it, for consistency at least, now is a good time to go around the exterior of the house and caulk it up. With the good caulk, we’re not cheaping out, generously apply it to cracks and around windows, door frames, chimneys and corner boards or any places the original caulk has shrunk. You can even put it in foundational cracks. Make them smooth as possible and don’t fill in any natural gaps so that the house can still vent.
Next, you can prime the house. Get the best primer available and have at it. Use a roller and a paint brush, but first test a small area and come back later to make sure it’s sticking; otherwise, you might have to clean again. Another step that you might want to do before this, though you can also do it after, is to cover everything that you don’t want paint on and tape your windows and doors. Go ahead and go drop cloth crazy.
Want to know another tricky part of exterior painting? Remove the downspouts. Label them so you know where they go. Move everything else as well – mailboxes, outdoor lights, bird feeders, hanging plants, etc. Move ground items too so you don’t have to step around them.

Paint

There may not seem like it but there is a lot that goes into the painting part of painting your home; from brush types (endless) to buckets, ladders, and technique. So we’ll hit the basics. Spray your paint or brush your paint, whatever works for you and paint shady sides first and avoid direct sun. When you paint go from left to right or vice versa, and then lower a level so you aren’t repainting over dry areas. How you paint deserves on your surface type so be sure you know what your siding entails and use quality paints with more than one coat.
Finally, after the whole house is painted, paint your trim and your doors. Then you can put back everything you took down. You can carefully inspect and do any necessary touch ups and then there is just one thing left to do. Now you have to clean up any mess you’ve made and pick up and put away your materials.  Wipe up any paint that’s where it shouldn’t be and that’s it.
Then you’re done! We’re done. Isn’t it all so tiring just even thinking about it? Maybe we’ll let the professionals handle this one instead. They’ll be able to do the maintenance for you to so you don’t have to do it again anytime soon.
The post An Outline of the Exterior Painting Process appeared first on Wall 2 Wall Painting & Services.

Should I Get Interior Painting Before I Sell My Home?

By Wall 2 Wall Painting & Services • 16 Jun, 2018
Selling a home can be exciting, as it is often the first step towards a new home that is full of potential and aspirations. However, it can also be a time in a homeowner’s life that is extremely stressful due to the many decisions and the massive amount of preparation that goes into getting a home ready for a sale. Saying goodbye to a home can also be emotional due to the memories that people tend to attribute to their residence, which makes added stress an absolute nightmare. One of the main questions that homeowners ask themselves when setting up their home for sale is if they should invest in interior painting before putting the property on the market. They often hesitate when making this decision because it can be difficult to determine if the increase in home value will be worth the initial expense and trying to figure this out on your own can be frustrating. Below are a few guidelines to help you make a decision that is in your best interest and will hopefully take some stress off your mind!

What to Expect When you Hire a Professional Painting Company

By Wall 2 Wall Painting & Services • 17 May, 2018
Hiring a professional to work on your home is always a new and exciting venture. However, when you have no idea what to expect, the whole process can get a little daunting. Should you get a quote upfront, or do you wait until the job is complete? What services can you expect to have included? A bunch of questions will likely fill your mind, but there is really no need to worry. As long as you are working with a reputable company in your area you can rest assured that no obstacle will be too great.

Commercial Painting FAQs

By Wall 2 Wall Painting & Services • 16 Apr, 2018
Painting a commercial space is a completely different experience from painting a residential area for many reasons. While sometimes homeowners take it upon themselves to paint their homes interior and exterior, when it comes to a business property it is highly recommended that you hire a team of commercial painting professionals to do it for you.

4 Common Misconceptions About Hiring a Painting Company

By Wall 2 Wall Painting & Services • 15 Mar, 2018
Hiring a painting company is one of the best decisions that a homeowner can make. In most cases, it is a quick way to make your home look amazing without undergoing major repairs. Nothing looks worse than a messy paint job or a paint job that beings to fade and peel after only a few months. Even though hiring professionals is a great idea, there are many common misconceptions that first-time customers might have. Below are the five most common misconceptions about paint companies and how you can deal with each scenario so that you know what to expect and have the most positive experience possible!

How to prepare an interior room for painting

By Wall 2 Wall Painting & Services • 13 Feb, 2018
Painting the interior walls is a smart way to alter the appearance of your rooms with color. It will enhance and beautify your home without you having to work hard or put any effort. Most people try to DIY, or they can hire professionals and they will take care of the task. When it comes to preparing a room for painting, here is a quick guide to explain the process.

4 Questions to ask before you get interior painting

By Wall 2 Wall Painting & Services • 19 Jan, 2018
When it comes to your home, you’ve got to be conscious and knowledgeable of whom you’re letting in to do work. If you don’t ask some questions before you hand over your interior paint job, you may end up with extra fees, a ton of unexpected cleaning, or a badly executed paint job that you’ll want to be redone right away.  But don’t let that scare you away from hiring someone to paint your interior; you just have to ask the right questions first.

Why is surface prep so important for interior painting?

By Wall 2 Wall Painting & Services • 17 Dec, 2017
Typically you won’t have to paint your interior too often but when it’s time for a new paint job, you just know. If it’s done right, it should last. You might think that painting the interior of your home just consists of buying the best-warrantied paint available and applying multiple coats.

8 Questions to ask before you get exterior painting done

By Wall 2 Wall Painting & Services • 16 Nov, 2017
The way the outside of your home looks can say a great deal about you as the homeowner.  A good first impression is always an important one and that’s why you want people to drive past your home and see nothing but curb appeal. Not to mention that the look of your home can affect its resale value. This is one of the reasons you might want to consider an exterior paint job.  Or maybe you want to add elemental protection to your home.

6 Reasons to Invest in Interior Painting

By Wall 2 Wall Painting & Services • 15 Oct, 2017
For most people, our homes are our pride and joy. It’s something that we live in, day in and day out, so it only makes sense that we would try our best to make sure it is not only comfortable and livable but attractive to those who might visit it. We also try to make sure it’s attractive ourselves and our families, that it meets our standards of beauty.

How often should the exterior of your home be painted?

By Wall 2 Wall Painting & Services • 28 Sep, 2017
Nothing can give the outside of your home a fresh look quite as quickly and impressively as a fresh coat of paint. Whether the paint on the exterior of your home is fading, chipping or cracking, it can bring down the curb appeal of your home. But if you’re looking to sell your home, or enjoy living there and just want to make it look nicer, exterior house painting is a job that needs to be done.
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