I’m about to embark on painting my house, and in prepartion for doing that I pressure washed it last night. How long should I wait before I begin to paint? The guy at the equipment place where I rented the pressure washer said I should wait a week before painting.
I live in Oregon and the weather for the next couple of days are due to be mid 70s and 50% humidity. There is a chance of rain Friday night.
You want to make sure the material is completely dry. I would go along with the suggestion. If you paint over material that has moisture imbedded, it will eventually blister your paint, or worse, develop into rot. Take the time to let it dry. Spend that time scraping off anything the washer didn’t get.
Did you pressure wash bare wood, or is there a layer of old paint? If the former, then he’s probably right; I’d give ample time for the wood to dry.
BTW: We live in a log house. I cleaned the wood last year, and I’m (still!) in the process of staining, sealing, caulking, etc. I didn’t use a pressure washer for a number of reasons. Instead, I “sand blasted” the wood. But I didn’t use sand – the unit I rented used ground-up corn cob media. Expensive, but it worked great.
There is just the slightest bit of bare wood. There is little flaking and cracking of the old paint, so I really wasn’t too concerned.
Just to be safe, I’ll probably wait. But I was really hoping to get started this weekend!
If you plan on using latex paint, then go ahead and paint this weekend. Worst that can happen is that you’ll find a few wet spots and need to touch them over on the second coat, or have a small area peel later that can be easily recoated. If you’ll be using an oil based paint, by all means wait until everything is fully dry. (And if you did the pressure-washing yourself, call it two weeks. Us amateurs tend to spray upwards sometimes with a pressure washer, and accidentally drive water into places that are not used to having water. Takes a while to dry.)
Gairloch