painting techniques for creative finishes

Steps To Painting The Outside Of Your Home From Start To Finish

30 January 2020 by Bradley Davis

Painting an entire house on the outside is not an easy task. It is the reason why so many homeowners turn to exterior house painting services. However, if you really want to give it a go yourself, here are the usual steps that most house painters take to paint the exterior of a house. 

1. Power-Wash the Whole Exterior

It does not matter if you are painting wood or painting plastic/vinyl siding. If the surface is not clean, the paint will not stick right. You will need to rent a pressure washer if you do not own one, and then you will need to pressure wash just the side of the house that you think you can reasonably paint in a single day. Starting very early in the morning, wash the one side of the house you intend to paint first. You will have to let the whole thing drip-dry for about an hour or so, less if it is a very hot and sunny day. 

2. Prime the Surface

A primer applied before the paint makes sure that the paint is not going to flake off once it starts to dry. You will have to paint the entire side of the house that you just washed. Then you have to wait for the primer to dry. If you are painting wood, you will have to sand all of the planks on the side of the house before and after you prime the siding. If you have plastic or vinyl siding, you will only need to sand after the primer has been applied. 

3. Sand, Then Paint

Sanding happens between the primer and the paint. If there are any areas where the primer was not applied equally, those bare spots will show up during the sanding process. Then you may need to paint on more primer over these areas and sand again. After you have applied enough primer and have sanded, then you can begin to apply the paint. 

Paint with the grain, so to speak. For wood, that means that your brush has to travel with the grain of the wood. If the planks, for whatever reason have a vertical grain, that is the way you paint. As for plastic or vinyl siding, you can just paint along the horizontal pieces of siding from one corner of the house to the opposite corner of the house. Painting one whole side of your house from the first step to the last could take up to three days or more, if you are doing it all yourself. 

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