A friend is asking about his wood sided home and he is planning on getting it painted this summer. He has asked a few contractors out for quotes but he is not sure which contractor is giving him the best deal based on the work that will be done.
We thought we would take this time to talk about what is needed to paint your home whether you do it yourself or hire it out. Many people will hire this job out because it does take quite a bit of time. You can expect about 3 days for a professional crew that has all the tools and the experience to do the work. If you were to do the exact same things that they do you could probably save yourself 50% to 70% depending on your home and what the contractors say they will be doing.
The first thing you need to do is inspect the condition of your existing paint. Most people will wait until their paint is in really poor condition because the cost of repainting is expensive. At this point I honestly have to break it to you that maybe you should give up on your wood siding and vinyl side your home. You may not love vinyl siding but its extremely easy to do the work yourself and you could probably side your entire home for the cost of having a professional repaint it. With that said if you have many layers of paint that are chipping off you will need to remove all of the loose paint, prep and prime the wood and then paint.
Preparing Your Home For Paint
The first step of preparation of wood siding is to remove as much loose paint as you can and the best tool to do this is a pressure washer. First it keeps the dust to a minimum and it also washes the surface while removing the paint. You need to be careful on older homes as the pressure washer can damage the wood. If you do find you have damaged wood while you are cleaning up then you will need to replace the boards. You can get new siding at most lumber stores.
After pressure washing some painters will use scrapers to remove the rest of the lose paint and prepare the surface other painter will use a 4 inch grinder with a 120 grit flap disk to both remove the old paint and level it out and feather the hard chip edges. Its a better solution to sand than to scrape in my opinion and there are ways to use a vacuum to catch the dust if that is a concern.
Next you want to wash the home again to remove all of the dust and loose flakes and at that point you will need to test the siding for moisture content. Pressure washing can introduce a lot of water into the wood so you might need to wait a day or even more before painting.
During the waiting you can apply filler and paintable latex caulk where appropriate.
Painting Your Home’s Exterior Siding
Some painters will suggest stains or exterior paints and others will do the job without primer however at the very minimum all of your bare wood should have primer applied. There are specialty primers that are best for outdoor work. If you have a lot of bare wood then prime the entire surface. Its not worth being cheap in this situation. Primer is also a necessity if you are changing the color of the home. Primers can be tinted to make a step change between what you have and what you want so a gray primer might be good to hide dark colors if your final coat is a light color.
After your primer has cured you can begin painting. Again there are a variety of ways that painters paint homes. Some will use only a spray painter and others will spray the surface and then back brush. Back brushing is a much better solution and this is true if you are using a roller to apply the paint instead of spraying it on. Back brushing needs to be done immediately so its important to have two people working on the area.
Final Note
Painting your home really isn’t that difficult of a job but it can take quite a bit of time for one person to accomplish and it can also be quite messy.
Many people will choose to address their street facing sides of their home first and this is not a bad Idea because it can allow you to break up the project across a few weeks.
If you are hiring a contractor to do the work for you then you should have all of the steps and the material list in writing before you agree to the contract. Also it is extremely important to not put money down on a project until the day the work starts. If they have a very minimal fee of maybe $100 for consultation that they roll into the final bill then that is not bad but you should not put down a down payment on work because delays in painting are notorious. Painters have to deal with weather and they also have to deal with unknown work that must be performed such as replacing siding before their work can start.
Always pay in schedules. If the work will take 3 days and the first day is only pressure washing then only pay for the pressure washing don’t pay for all of the paint and materials. Any contractor that is respectable has enough money in reserve to cover the costs of their next job. On the other hand you should not delay your payments when the job is completed or withhold money if you think there was a small problem. If you find serious problems with the work then withholding payment is up to you but it could be worse than trying to recover your money in court.
That is another thing your contractor must provide you proof of insurance for liability for their work and also a workers compensation insurance payment. You must also have in your contract that you are not liable for any injury or damages while they are on your property. You need to cover yourself in case a worker has an accident. Its difficult to think about but if it happens its much much worse to deal with if you haven’t covered yourself and you went with a low bid from a contractor that isn’t following good business practices. Most contractors are in business to stay in business because this is the way they make their living so expect good service and professionalism at all times.