Exterior Painting....Why is it so Harder than Interior?

The exterior season is just around the corner, and I have a love hate relationship with exterior work. I enjoy it because I get to be outside, and as long as the weather cooperates I usually have no issues staying really busy. This year I am starting the season with four exteriors that I could not fit into my schedule last year. The hate…well it is exhausting work. Up and down ladders all day, and if there is a lot of scraping and sanding I will be shot at the end of the day. And there is all of the other stuff that can make it so much work….

Here are the things that you should be thinking about when you hire a painter to paint your exterior work. Most of these are why painting can be so difficult in the early spring and late autumn.

• Air and surface temperature usually has be at 40 degrees or higher

  • So, if it is 50 degrees out and the area to be painted is in the shade chances are that it cannot be painted

• Grey wood (wood that looks aged) is no good, It has to be removed

  • Grey wood will not hold paint long

• The house has to be cleaned

  • A layer of dirt under the new paint will lead to failure

• As too cold is not good, most paint cannot not be applied when the air or surface temp is above 90 degrees

  • it is very easy for a dark surface to reach well above 90 degrees even when the air temp is below 90 degrees

    • I have seen temps as high as 140 degrees. Paint fries at that temp

• Moisture…this one is the worst of them all.. Especially if you live right on the water

  • The moisture level of wood must be below 10%.

  • If there is dew or rain in the morning it can often take hours for wood to dry to a moisture level that will allow it to be painted

  • A little dew in the morning on the north or west side of a building can mean no painting can be done on that day.

Keeping up with New Technologies (An Educated Painter)

My grandfather use to paint. He painted steeples. I could never paint steeples for a living. I do not mind heights, but I have my limits. The painting profession has changed very little since the time that my grandfather painted…on the surface. But in reality better paints, better prep tools, and better safety tools are constantly being developed, and I want to try them all.

I am now working on my seventh year on my own. And, I have learned that there are essentially two types of painters when it comes to new technologies. Those that refuse to try new things, and those that are eager to try anything that makes their job easier and better. I am the latter. I am not saying that you cannot get a quality paint job from those that are set in their ways, but there is so much out there that can make painting easier on the painter and home owner, and hopefully make the job last longer.

Not everything that I try work. I have a lot of equipment in my storage garage that has not seen the light of day for quite some time. There are others that are game changers. I am going to talk about a couple of these briefly,

Festool

Festool is a German tool company. Although I am not a fan of Cadillac cars, the saying about them is apropos…Festool is the Cadillac of sanders. From what I have been told all of the tools that the company makes are top notch. I have a cousin that bought one of its sanders specifically designed for autobody shops. And, anytime that I have run into a carpenter that uses its tools they have high praise for them. I use the sanders. The reason that I use them is three fold. They are workhorses, they design a sander for almost every possible situation (I will soon purchase my sixth sander) and they are clean. The sanders attach to extractors (vacuums) that turn on when the sander is turned on and turn off five seconds after the sander is turned off. The extractor sucks up almost all of the dust…99% if the entire surface of the sandpaper is in contact with the surface being sanded. This means a much cleaner work site, and a lot less time spent cleaning.

Mad Dog Primers

Mad Dog Primers are a game changer. Essentially the primers are glue like. I use this primer on exterior jobs when the surface is in rough shape, or is difficult to prep properly. Such an example would be lead paint. Whenever I run into lead paint that is a really bad state of affairs I use Mad Dog. Mad Dog can be used over glossy paint without being sanded, and it can be used with somewhat weathered wood. When lead work is done, workers have to wear Tyvek suits, and plastic has to be laid out to keep dust from contaminating the ground. So, the less sanding the scraping the better. The company also claims that its primers allow the paint job to last up to twenty years. I have not been using it long enough to verify, but I have used it on wood that was so beat up that I felt it should not have been painted. Five years later and it still looks great.

Coffered Ceilings

Well, this was supposed to be a much bigger post about a recent job that I did in my own home removing wallpaper that was not installed properly. This resulting in a very time consuming removal and a lot of repairs before the walls were ready to be painted.  However, I posted the pictures on my phone on Facebook as a video, and for some reason I can no longer find them on my phone, nor can I get them in picture format from Facebook. I tried posting the video here, but I just could not get it to work.

Well, the other big part of the job was fixing the coffered ceiling. A coffered ceiling is a ceiling that is broken into sections by trim. When painted properly they look great. When the trim is painted the same color as the ceiling their is really nothing special about them...the trim blends into the ceiling and is lost. To make matters worse on this job was that that last time the trim was painted it was rolled and the stipple from the roller was on the trim. Trim is supposed to not have stipple on it.