Our Procedures

1. PRESSURE WASHING
   It is extremely important to pressure wash the house in order to clean it before preparation of any surfaces are done.  The purpose of the washing is ONLY to clean the house; never to remove paint.  Since the paint is ALWAYS harder than wood, pressure washing to remove loose paint will often gouge the bare wood because of the high water pressure.  All loose paint should be removed by scraper or other means after the pressure washing is done and the house is mostly dried out.

Preparation Work

• Primers:  Primers have a very specific purpose on the outside of a house; they adhere to bare wood or metal.  Once the primer has dried the latex top coat bonds to the primer.  Theoretically, primers could be used for their purpose and be used as a top coat.  Top coats can not be used effectively as primers because they are not meant to adhere well to bare wood or metal.
• Caulking:  When re-painting a house (I don’t paint many new houses) it is important to caulk in any areas of the house where the caulking is cracked or missing.  The only real purpose of caulking for paint jobs is cosmetic.  Normally the places that are caulked are around windows and doors, around corner boards and around things like vents, etc.  Caulking never goes underneath the siding; the gap underneath is supposed to be there because it allows the house to “breathe” by releasing the built-up humidity from the inside of the walls to the exterior.
• Sanding:  Any wood surfaces that are rough need to be sanded.  I like to use 80 grit sandpaper.  I don’t use “fillers” for the reasons stated below: therefore; there are none to be sanded.  On the exterior of a house I rarely sand the paint with the exception of doors themselves.  The reason I don’t sand paint on siding is that it weakens the paint in proportion to the amount of sanding that is done to it.  If the paint gets thinner than the thickness from the previous paint job the paint comes off much easier than if left alone.  In addition, since bare wood is much softer than paint or primer, it will sand faster and deeper than the paint being sanded.  This results in divots.  Leaving areas that have been scraped but where the paint has not been sanded inevitabley leaves “pock marks.”  In my opinion, it is better to have pock marks than a problematic paint job that won’t last very long.  Many painting contractors disagree with me about sanding paint on siding.  The same contractors usually disagree with me about the use of exterior spackle (also called fillers).
• Fillers:  I do not use exterior fillers for smoothing out siding where their are pock marks because the fillers themselves cause major problems down the line.  Wood siding expands and contracts with the hot and cold seasons.  Fillers do not and almost always crack.  When the fillers crack they often soak up water.  Once they are inendated than they often completely fail and chunks will start falling off the house.  Once this happens I know of no effective way to correct the problem but by systematically chipping away at the filler until it goes back to bare wood.  In my opinion, fillers can virtually destroy a house’s siding withing 5-10 years.  Once fillers are used there is no going back.  The only scenarios where I use fillers on the outside of a house is when there is a hole that is no more than a quarter inch in diameter.  The filler can’t do any damage in that scenario.

Setting up Ladders, Ladder Jacks, and Planks

1. When using tall ladders (16′ to 28′) I almost always tie them off to the house using hooks and cords so that the ladders can not move much.  When I need to be high up and in one place for a while, I use ladder jacks and a plank that I can walk on.  The planks I have are 12′ long.  The plank goes in between two ladders and rests on the jacks that are hooked into the ladders against the house walls.  I normally use cords to keep the ladder and jacks from moving.  All these precautions make the high
   work safer.

Troublshooting Exterior Surface Problems

1. MILDEW STAINS
   Mildew can be a problem on a house where there is much foliage nearby.  Mildew is a fungus that builds up on paint surfaces.  They appear as black spots.  Much of the mildew can be removed through pressure washing.  However, many times, the mildew will cause stains to remain on the siding.  These stains can easily be primed with a good exterior latex primer and top-coated with a high quality exterior paint.  There are mildew killers in every brand of exterior paint I know of in the Pacific N.W.  Since there are mildew killers in every brand of exterior paint I know of in the Pacific N.W., they will slow down the build up of more mildew.  Most of the mildew will be killed by the mildewicides but some will survive and eventually thrive.
2. SURFACTANT BLEEDING
   Humidity, namely fog, dew and rain can cause a problem on exterior surfaces newly painted with exterior latex paint. Painting during a humid day followed by a night of below 50 degrees can affect the paint film.  Latex paints dry to the touch in several hours.  However, they take 2-4 weeks to fully cure to the point that they will stay at for the life of the paint job.
3. TANNIN BLEED-THROUGH
   Many woods that are used for house siding have something called “tannins” in them.  These are oils that will come out of the latex paint.  In order to block the tannins, oil-based primer is needed.  After the primer is applied, latex paint will successfully cover those areas.