Exterior Painting

By Jonathan Berohn

That’s right. You know it’s time. You can’t pretend any more that the peeling paint on the trim is an accent texture. Time to paint the house. Sure, you could hire someone to paint your house if you feel like dropping $2000 or more. But even if you like to blow your cash, where’s the fun in that anyway? You know you want to get out there and paint. OK—some maybe I’m exaggerating a tad, but take it from someone who just painted his house. It is a manageable project. It will save you a LOT of money. It will give you quite a feeling of accomplishment.

The Process

Unfortunately you can’t just grab a brush and start painting. If you want to do this right there are some definite preparation steps you need to follow. The first thing you want to do is check for and remove any mildew that has grown on your existing paint. The old tried and true method is bleach plus a brush, but if you have widespread mildew this isn’t really practical. Fortunately several companies recognize this and make products that remove mildew without scrubbing. Both Behr and Zinsser offer this kind of product. I used the Behr version and it worked quite well.

Once you have removed any mildew, you need to power wash the whole house. You can, of course buy a power washer, but unless you really like to use high-pressure water on your car tires or something, I’d recommend renting one. HSS Hire is a good choice for renting tools. You can also locate a local rental outfit at Service Magic.

After the power washing you will want to make all the repairs your house needs. For me that included: rebuilding the porch railing, replacing some rotted window trim, screwing down loose and split boards, patching holes and cracks, and caulking—lots of caulking. The best caulk I’ve found for a painting project is GE’s XST paintable silicone. It goes on and cleans up easily, provides and excellent seal, and takes paint like the best acrylic caulk.

The Paint

Once the caulking is done, it’s finally time to scrape and paint. For scraping all you need is muscle. For the paint, you’ll want to make a careful decision because you certainly won’t want to do this more than once. Again, I opted for Behr. Behr is a good quality paint, and they have the best system I’ve seen for helping you pick your colors. You can online to the Behr site or to any Home Depot and use a computerized matching system to try different color combinations. The Home Depot Terminals will even print out a pretty good full color sample for you to take home. And now that you’ve got the paint picked out, all you have to do is paint the whole house. Just remember to keep a good grip on the ladder.