Help me paint my house! (Advice sought)

In My Humble Opinion
1

Well, my house needs painting and I’m generally clueless. I went this evening to one of those mega-self-fixit kind of stores, you know the ones, where they advertise courteous helpful staff that can turn a clueless schlub like me into a cross betwixt Bob Villa, Norm Abrams and Amy Wynn. Of course there was nary a service rep to be found that actually knew anything about painting; apparently they all work on the weekend.

Anyway, here is the goal: paint the exterior, with particular attention to the windows/trim, of my two story clapboard house located in southwest Ohio. I’m guessing that the weather should hold up for the next several weeks, and that’s the first question, what weather conditions do I need?

The next question is what kind of paint to use? Do I use a different paint for the trim versus the siding. The siding is actually some strange paper composite stuff, not real wood. And what is the difference between different types of paints? How much paint should it take (house is roughly 2500 sq feet)?

What about prep work? I think that I need to scrape all of the wood around all of the windows, but does it need to be sanded as well? If so, how finely? Anything else I’ve not thought of?

Finally, (I think), what are the right tools for the job? Should I consider a power spray machine thingy? If so, which one? Should I rent a professional one, or buy one and hope it lasts the whole job?

What have I missed? Am I insane for doing this; should I look to hire someone instead? All polite feedback is greatly appreciated. Amusing anecdotes and clever watchouts doubly so!

2

Sounds like you are indeed clueless and should probably hire someone. You also might post this in GQ for better responses. I don’t have a lot of time right now, but will give some basics.

Many options exist for painting a house, but basically you need to do thorough prep work: wash off all dirt and really loose paint with a power washer, then scrape any remaining loose paint. You probably don’t need to sand anything. Replace any rotted lumber. Prime any bare spots.

Do not paint below 50 degrees F. Do not paint over wet surfaces unless you want to come back in a few months and sweep up the paint off the ground.

I would use a top grade exterior latex. Mask off all windows, meters, etc. and use a spray gun. This can be tricky without practice and you will end up missing spots. I would suggest painting walls and trim the same color, but it’s your time and energy.

Is your floor space 2500 sq. ft, or is your wall surface 2500 sq.ft.? Paint cans tell you on the back the approximate coverage per gallon. Buy extra, especially if you are using a spraygun.

Gotta run, but someone else will chime in, I’m sure.

3

Thanks, Chefguy, I went for IMHO instead of GQ since the answers to my questions would, in general, be opinions and not factual.

When you say don’t paint below 50 F, does that mean that it’s alright to paint during the day when it’s in the seventies (like now) but what if it drops below 50 at night? Or if it’s not topping fifty during the day? And does that hold for all paint types?

Unfortunately the trim will pretty much have to be a different color, but that’s just more work, so not a big deal. (I am currently unemployed, sort of, so can take the time to do this as I need to).

Floor space is 2500 sq ft, without going out and measuring I don’t have a good idea of wall surface area.

4

Have you considered replacing the siding? You have the time.

[I am suggesting that person who does not know how to paint tackling re-siding. I wonder about me.]

  1. Paint does not belong out of doors. Stain is always better; it doesn’t last as long (some say) but you don’t have to scrape, and scraping is 90 % of the work. But it’s too late for that.

  2. Latex paint does not belong out of doors. Many people will disagree, and tell you that latex is just as good as oil, and that when paint peels it is always due to poor preparation of the surface. If this is true, painters who use oil are consistently much better at surface prep. But you don’t want to put expensive exterior oil paint on such a cheesy substrate.

  3. Do not buy expensive tools for a job you are going to do once or twice in your life, unless you make way more money than any honest person deserves. Rent one, if you must, but if you are unemployed anyhow, why not paint by hand?

  4. [All caps] Put down a tarp to catch all the scrapings if your house was build before 1980. [/All caps] Actually, you should do that no matter when the house was built.

5

  1. Residing will happen at some point down the road, probably with a composite shingle type siding, if we are in the house that long. But it needs a coat now. Most other houses in our neighborhood are redwood, cedar, or clapboard (wood) siding. Some have brick or stone. (Midwest neighborhood price range $350K++)

  2. Stain would probably not fit in with our neighborhood and I could have trouble from the House Committee on how our Houses should look.

  3. Interesting point, I assume that oil goes on more smoothly and evenly than latex. (I don’t know home exteriors but have some latent artistic abilities.

  4. The spray tools I saw tonight for this ranged from $50-90. May be cheaper than a rental, given that this might take me a few days. Even though I am unemployed I am still lazy, so if it’s easier to do by spraygun then I’d prefer to go that way.

  5. House was built 1983. I’ll put a tarp down anyway.

Thanks.

6

Well, if re-siding is likely, don’t use oil; too expensive.

  1. There are opaque stains; the only way to tell brown paint from brown stain is that the paint is peeling. [Can you tell I have strong feelings on this subject?]

  2. Actually, oil paint is, to be blunt, a bitch. Much more difficult, unless you thin it enough that you need three coats, instead of two. That’s why professional painters SWEAR that latex is just as good (Dad was a professional painter; he hated oil and wouldn’t use anything else on his own house.)

  3. You can drop that much on good paintbrushes, easily. Let me know how good the sprayguns are.

  4. Oh, put down the tarp for washing, too, or you could hurt your foundations plants, and they do more for the house that a paint job.

Have fun.

[I love painting.]

7

I bought one of those $90 electric sprayers and regretted it until I sold it at a garage sale to some poor soul for ten bucks.

For starters, they are LOUD. Let me say it again as you probably didn’t hear it over the sprayer’s “Braaak-aaak-aaak! Braaaaak!” racket - they are LOUD!

The smaller ones can’t develop enough suction to pull paint out of a 5-gallon pail through a hose and into the sprayer itself. Mine only worked OK with the paint in its own 1-quart jar, despite coming with a hose and clips to hold said hose into a pail of paint.

Cleanup time absorbs the time saved in actually painting. Between chasing down the overspray that got onto windows, the sprayer itself has a handful of small bits and passageways that need to be kept absolutely clean, or the sprayer will clog and jam the next time you use it.

I wound up buying brushes and rollers and one of those bucket roller screens that lets you load up a roller directly from the 5-gallon bucket.

As for how much paint to get, multiply the height of your walls by the length, ignore windows and add 25%. Trust me. By the time you’re done, you’ll use that 25% on excessively porous spots that really should have been spot-primed, spots that went on a little thin and need a re-do, and you’ll be wearing the rest. :smiley:

If you truly are clueless about painting, poke around places like www.lowes.com, www.ehow.com, www.glidden.com and similar to get an idea of what you need to do. The actual painting is perhaps 25% of the project. Prep is the biggie. Goof up here, and you’ll be re-painting next April.

8

The most important prep is Scrape and Prime. you don’t really need to do any sanding, nobody will expect your house to have a fine furniture finish. Forget the sprayer, they give an uneven splotchy look that is really apparent in a year or so. Use high quality paint and primer as well as the best brushes you can find.

9

Speaking as someone who bought a house shortly after it was repainted, let me tell you: tape the damn windows. It will save you time, it allows you to go crooked on the window’s trim, and it will prevent you from having to look out of windows that have a border of an inch or more of freakin’ sloppy paint on the glass.

As for paint color, if you’re interested, lots of paint suppliers have created period-specific palettes. If you have an older home, it’s neat to look at the colors that were used on houses during the time-period in which your house was built. The street I live on is almost entirely lined with homes about 100 years old, and a lot of them are going back to the colors that were used at that time, so there are vibrant blues, lavendars and yellows. It’s really cool.

10

I used a sprayer & some Weatherbeater stuff from TrueValue. I might add that the car, bike, chairs,plants & table outside also kind of watch the house. So you might want to rethink that sprayer idea.

11

If you’re going to be in the house for 5 years or more, I suggest rolling on the paint, as opposed to spraying. My mom made a nice living for a while going house-to-house in a gated community rolling on paint after the thin layer that had been sprayed on by the painters the contractors hired out. A good quality latex, properly applied, should last you quite a while.

You’ll want:

A GOOD latex. It saves you in the long-run, as one coat will do, instead of two, so money and labor.

A good brush for “cutting in” and doing the trim. We used Purdy brand, which is reasonably priced, but excellent, and will be around as long as you’re painting.

A roller and roller tray, plus and extension

Ladder, depending on the height of your building

Good scraping equipment. You might need to get a small assortment of things (heavy-duty handles with replaceable blades work well)

If you end up scraping down to bare wood, you’ll also want a primer

Tarps, tape, paint containers, spare buckets

12

Yike, I’m bushed, just reading all that stuff. Take a break while I tell you this story.

I was shopping downtown last week when a gorgeous young lady accosted me. She pressed herself against me, and she whispered in my ear, “Honey, for $300, I’ll do anything you want.” She painting my house right now.

13

“A GOOD latex. It saves you in the long-run, as one coat will do, instead of two, so money and labor.”

Not if he already has oil based enamel on it. Latex would peel off…

Be a lot easier for me to suggest things if I could see the house first.

How about one of those stores that do matching? You could get some latex/enamel that matches say your eyes or skin tone?

14

Keep in mind, that siding is going to have to be replaced. Consider this paint job practice for the STAIN that will be applied to the new siding.

15

Yes, you can do it. I’m a middle aged female with mobility problems and no prior house maintenance experience. I painted my last house myself (and sanded and varnished the floors!). The guys at the local hardware store were amazingly knowledgable and helpful, (though very young) and gave me lots of good advice. Find some who know their stuff and talk to them about products and tips.

Some tips:

As a rule of thumb, preparation takes about 4 times as long as the painting does. Prep takes time, paint takes money and time. Skimp on prep and you’ll pay twice, 'cos you’ll be back doing it again in a couple of years. Sand, scrape, fill etc like the others have said. I’m iffy about taping the windows, as the paint can peel off when you remove the tape, and if you leave the tape on too long some adhesives can stick fairly permanently to the glass.

I’m in Australia, and the sun is fierce. It is possible to buy outdoor-use water based paint, and it is much, much easier to use than latex paint, both in terms of painting and of cleaning up afterwards.

If you decide to go with water-based paint, get the best quality brushes you can afford, as they are less likely to shed bristles if you look after them. Discovering stray bristles stuck in a surface you’ve just painted is a right bugger. Oldfields seems OK to me. For oil based paint, I buy cheapo brushes, and throw them out when I’m done. I don’t like useing turps for cleanup.

At a minimum, get one large brush (bristles about the width of your palm, and about a thumb thick) for general painting, and a cutting-in brush for edges. I wouldn’t use a roller for clapboard, as you’ll have to do each join with a brush anyway.

Before use, riffle the bristles to get rid of stray hairs. Then soak each brush in water for a cpouple of minutes and shake off excess before putting into paint. This loads the bristles with water, so the paint doesn’t soak in. Makes the paint last longer and makes clean-up easier. If you are going to be painting continuously, get a plastic bag to tightly wrap the brush in between coats - if it doesn’t dry out the paint doesn’t set, and it saves on cleanup.

Load the brush with paint to about halfway up the bristles and/or put a collar (you can get them here made of foam, but an old pantyhose leg will do) around the metal band that holds the bristles in order to to stop drips getting all over your hand and arm (and front door, bathroom door, jeans zipper…!). More paint on a bigger brush does not get the job done faster.

I can go on (and on, and on) at this level of detail if that is what you need. However, this site dulux is very useful. If you haven’t picked colours yet, their “My Colour” section is more help than you’d think. Beats little paint chips hands down. And they do have a DIY section…

16

We live in a log house, which means I spend 99% of my free time precariously balanced on a fiberglass ladder 25 feet above concrete and applying some kind of coating to the wood.

A few tips:

  1. Ladder safety. I almost paralyzed myself after falling from a ladder. Make absolutely sure the ladder is not set at an improper angle.

  2. If you wear prescription spectacles, don a pair a goggles.

  3. Unless you’re applying varnish to Benjamin Franklin’s roll top desk, there’s no reason to purchase a $10 paintbrush. Go with the cheapies.

  4. I buy stain in 5-gallon buckets and use a Wagner 9150 sprayer. The sprayer was 400. But I’m not suggesting you go this route; I have a *lot* of coatings to put on the !@#% house, and a sprayer of this type makes the job go a lot faster. (And even then I have to back-brush it.) If you’re just going to apply one coat of paint every 10 years, it probably wouldn’t make sense to invest in a sprayer of this type.

  5. Buying paint is not the time to skimp on quality. In other words, do not concern yourself with the cost of paint, as your time is much more valuable. For all practical purposes, the paint is free regardless of cost (within reason, of course). Just check Consumer Reports and buy the best paint available.

17

Again, thanks for all replies here. I knew I’d get a wealth and variety of knowledge in this place. Crafter_Man, you’ve got to be careful. You’re dangerously close to me and might get pressed into service.