Exterior Painting

The Coating Goes on Last

Once the wood is sound, painting an exterior is a sequence, and the sequence is not flexible. Wash, scrape and sand to a bonded edge, prime everything bare, caulk the joints that should be closed, then two coats of finish. Skip a step or reorder it and you get a wall that looks right for one summer.

This page covers that half of the work. The carpentry half is on our wood siding restoration page, and on an older Pasadena house it usually comes first.

Prep Is Most of the Cost

People are startled by this and they should not be. On a full exterior, the coating itself is typically a small share of the labour. Scraping a hundred year old film back to a sound edge is slow, and it is slower on a shingle wall than on flat lap siding because you are working around every butt and keyway.

We take failed film back to where the remaining paint is genuinely adhered, then feather the edge so the step does not telegraph through the topcoat. Carbide scrapers do most of it. Infrared plates come out for heavy build up on flat trim where the alternative is hours of dust. Heat guns hot enough to vaporise lead do not, ever.

Almost every house we work on in this city predates 1978, so the underlying coats contain lead and the prep is done lead safe. Plastic and containment below the work area, no dry power sanding without shrouded extraction, wet methods where they are practical, and a full clean up at the end of each working day rather than at the end of the project. On an occupied home with a family and a garden, that daily reset is the part that matters.

Primer Is Chosen per Surface

There is no single primer that does everything, and buying one on price is a false economy.

Bare cedar or redwood needs a stain blocking primer or the tannin bleeds through and ghosts your topcoat brown. A chalky, previously coated surface needs a bonding primer that can grip a marginal substrate. Stucco and masonry want an alkaline resistant masonry primer. Rusting ferrous metal, on a porch rail or a window guard, wants a rust inhibitive primer and nothing else will do. Bare exterior trim end grain wants primer on every face before it is installed.

We spot prime rather than prime everything when the existing coating is sound. Blanket priming a wall that does not need it is money that would be better spent on the second finish coat.

Caulking, and Where Not To

Caulk closes the joints that should never have been open. Trim to siding, casing to jamb, corner boards, the vertical seams between siding butt joints. A flexible exterior sealant with real movement capability, tooled into the joint rather than smeared across the face of it.

What we do not caulk is anything that is meant to drain or breathe. The bottom edge of a lap board, where any water that gets behind the siding has to come out. The bottom of a window sill. The gap under a shingle butt. Sealing those turns a wall that dries into a wall that holds, and it is one of the most common pieces of damage a well meaning painter does to an old house.

Sheen, and What It Hides

The ladder runs flat, matte, eggshell, satin, semi-gloss, gloss. Every step up gains washability and toughness and loses the ability to hide a surface flaw, because a shinier film reflects raking light off every ripple and scarf joint. On a restored wood elevation that has visible patching history, a flat or low sheen on the field is the honest choice, with the trim stepped up to satin or semi-gloss so the shadow lines and the Craftsman detailing read properly from the street. Doors and sash go up again, because they get touched and they need to take a wipe.

Two Coats, and Why One Coat Quotes Come Back

Over any colour change, and over any significant amount of new primer, one coat will not build the film thickness the manufacturer’s own coverage rate assumes. It will look acceptable on the day and it will fail early and unevenly, worst on the elevation that gets the most sun. A one coat quote is almost always cheaper because it is less work, not because the painter has found an efficiency.

Two coats also gives you a chance to catch what the first coat reveals. Light hits a freshly coated wall differently and defects show that were invisible on bare primer.

Weather Windows in Pasadena

Dry time is not cure time. A modern acrylic latex can be recoated in a few hours and is still weeks from full cure and full block resistance, which is why a freshly painted door should not be shut tight onto its stops the same evening.

Surface temperature matters more than air temperature. A west wall in August can be well above the maximum application temperature on the can while the thermometer on the porch reads comfortable, and paint applied to a hot wall flashes off before it can level or wet the surface properly. We chase shade around the house through the day. In cooler months the constraint flips and we watch the dew point, because a film that gets damp before it has set will lose adhesion and dull.

For trim and doors, acrylic latex has largely displaced alkyd and for good reason, since it stays flexible and does not amber. Alkyd still has a place where you want a harder, tighter film and can accept slower dry and eventual yellowing on a light colour.

Call (626) 243-2387 to get the elevations looked at.