Car paint vs. house paint

Factual Questions
1

Why does the paint on my car last for the life of the car (current car is 10 years old), but my house has to be repainted every 3-4 years and the paint degrades along the way? What would it take to put a 20-year paint job on my house?

2

try metal siding with baked on paint, it might last as long as your car.

3

For what it’s worth, our house hasn’t been repainted for at least 9 years. But maybe we’re just neglecting it (haven’t noticed the paint degrading, though).

4

Perhaps you need better quality paint. There is a difference.

5

Yes, that is basically what steel or aluminum siding is. And it usually lasts as long as car paint, or longer.

6

Wait.

You repaint your house ever 3-4 years? I think there is a problem with your house paint, then. We don’t paint our house even close to this often.

7

There are also longer term paints for buildings they aren’t very successful due to cost. Painting a house with a 15 year product can cost 4-5 times as much as your typical 5 year product and that is including the cost of repainting.

8

If your house is small enough, you could bake it in this stove. I think it’s still billed as the world’s largest, so if you wanted a paint oven for a larger house, you’d have to improvise something yourself.

9

The stove is gone, though. I pass by the tire that replaced it all the time.

Here it is.

Huge Tire

10

The stove is now at the state fairgrounds.

11

House paint is often the victim of the surface.

Wood is very dynamic. It wants to absorb moisture, flex, warp, split, expand, contract, etc.

The first house exterior paint job should easily last 10-15 years, when done right, on stable wood that has been properly prepped. The problem is that the next job will rarely be up to the quality of the first paint job, because people paint over paint, or don’t invest in proper stripping and painting.

But right off the bat, painting metal, in a shop, is getting two major advantages over wood. Metal is simply a better/friendlier surface, and the paints are applied in a controlled environment, sometimes taking advantage of electrical charges to bond to the metal, or at least prepping the metal via a primer or pretreatment that way.