September 8, 2008
Exterior Painting
THERE'S NO WAY the exterior of your house can make it through another season without a new coat of paint.
On the sunny side of the house, bare wood has won the war. On the shady side, there's as much mildew as paint.
No question, a paint job is in order. The question is: whether to hire a professional painting contractor or do it yourself?
"I would not advocate homeowners painting their own exteriors," says George Domedion, technical director for the Painting and Decorating Contractors of America.
"Do it yourself. Absolutely," says Debbie Zimmer, communications director of the Paint Quality Institute.
So whom do you believe? While Domedion represents professional contractors, who want your business, his warning could be good advice: Without taking the proper steps, a do-it-yourselfer's work is doomed.
Zimmer's group is an educational arm of the Rohm and Haas Co., a major world supplier of paint chemicals. There's also truth in her advice: homeowners who recognize the problems stand a chance of producing a quality paint job on their own.
For many the choice is simple: Hire the contractor. The major advantages are manpower and experience. The contractor has the crew, knowledge and tools to complete in a week what might take a do-it-yourselfer the entire summer.
But for homeowners who have time and motivation, painting remains the nation's No. 1 do-it-yourself project, Zimmer says. And if you want the job to achieve a professional standard, most of your time should be geared toward paint's primary foe: improper surface preparation. There's one more incentive: painting your own home can save you big money. A do-it-yourselfer can save almost 85 percent.
"There should be no fear to painting your own home; it is not that hard," says Selim Saglam, who has been a professional home painter for more than 15 years, first in his native Turkey and for the last 10 in the Port Washington area. "I just did one 90-year-old house, a very big job. The job was about $17,000.
"But the painting and the paint itself was not the major expense; 90 percent of the job was preparation."
That means scraping, wire-brushing, sanding, priming and, in some cases, replacing old, rotten wood.
"We typically say there are four steps to a quality paint job," Zimmer says. "No. 1, always prepare the surface correctly; two, use a top-quality paint; three, use the proper tools; and four, always paint in the right weather conditions."
Sounds pretty simple, but if No. 1 isn't performed to the highest of standards, all else fails.
"Most homeowners don't understand surface preparation," Domedion says, "and of all the surfaces, wood is the hardest to paint because it breathes."
Because of that breathability, more things can go wrong. Surfaces such as old aluminum or vinyl siding and newer fiber-cement siding, Zimmer says, are easier to paint than wood and when prepared correctly, actually hold paint better than wood.
Moisture
Experts say most paint jobs fail because of moisture; it's trapped in the wood before the paint is applied, or it is prevalent in the home and tries to escape through the walls. The escaping moisture causes the paint to peel from the inside layer to the outside layer.
Older homes were not all that well insulated, so moisture generated from kitchens and bathrooms years and years ago had a chance to escape through tiny cracks and openings, Domedion says.
With better insulation, most of those tiny openings in today's homes have been eliminated. So moisture that is trapped in interiors has to seek a different escape route; it chooses to travel through the wood siding. In this manner, moisture creates problems for paint because it works from inside the siding, starting from the nonexposed -and often unpainted-wood, and pushes through to the outside. Over time, the paint's inside layer loses adhesion. That's why when new siding is installed today, especially wood planks and plywood, more and more contractors are priming the backside, the side that is laid against the house, and all other unexposed pieces, to keep moisture from permeating to the exterior paint job.
Copyright © 2008, Newsday Inc.
