5 Steps Before Exterior Painting

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Painting anything outside requires good weather, time and paint. However, it’s not quite that easy. We’re talking about a big job. And with any enormous task, you only want to perform it once. The only way to ensure that you will do the task correctly is to prepare as much as you can in advance.

Here are some steps you should follow before starting your exterior painting job:

1. 1.Groundwork

   Arrange a tarp under the area you’re about to tackle. So the wind won’t carry it away, pin it down. Put on a surgical mask and some goggles. You’re going to be scraping the entire surface and you want to protect yourself from breathing-in any airborne materials. Likewise, if you’ve ever tried to remove dry paint from your hair, you know you should wear a hat.

Peeling the chipped paint from the surface is vital. Once you do that, there’s going to be rough edges left behind. This is the first time you’ll use sandpaper on this job.

2. 2.Scraping

   Peeling the chipped paint from the surface is vital. Once you do that, there’s going to be rough edges left behind. This is the first time you’ll use sandpaper on this job. Smooth the jagged edges to a flat finish. Failure to do this will make the paint unable to stick to the surface.

3. 3.Exterior Spackle®

   Put a blob of Exterior Spackle® on a putty knife and plug-in any of the gaps which have been exposed. If you have any other holes or openings, be sure to fill them as well. Smooth things out so that everything is flush. You’ll want to wait for the Exterior Spackle® to dry, which could take a day-or-so. Once ready, sand the Exterior Spackle® with 150-grit sandpaper until the surface is smooth.

4. 4.Priming The Surface

   This task falls into two categories: Previously painted homes and wood that has never tasted a lick of color. If your place has already a coat or two, it’s not mandatory to apply primer. But if you want to do it like a pro, give the outer coat something uniform to stick to – primer.

    

   Let’s say the home has never been painted. You definitely want to prepare the surface with a coat of primer. Not so fast, though. If it’s been sitting in the weather for a while, you need to get the area you’re about to cover ready to accept a coat of paint. Get out the sander and give all surfaces a little going over. By making the area ever-so-slightly rough helps the paint adhere to the surface.

5. 5.Sealing Potential Water Spots

   Time to get out the caulking gun. Armed with moisture-proof goo, start sealing every hole, nook, cranny, open seam, door, window, corner joint and whatever else you want to protect from moisture. While you’re doing this, make note of areas that might need to be restored or replaced.

6. 6.Final Touches

   After all of the preparation and right before you begin painting, thoroughly clean the surfaces with a damp sponge. Like interior painting, you want to take a top-to-bottom approach: Outer walls, window/door frames and finally, the trim.

7.Spread Rates

Putting too little paint here and too much paint there leads to an un-uniformed look. The formula to figure this out is that for a thickness of one mil, with a paint containing 100% solids, the coverage rate will be about 1630 square-feet per gallon. Let’s say the paint has 50% solids. To get one mil of thickness of one mil, the coating will have a spread rate of 815 square feet.

If you decide this might be too large of a job for you to handle, use Redbeacon.com. Our website will help you find the best, most reliable and most experienced exterior painter for this project.