Best Methods for Painting the Exterior of Your House

When you first start to paint your home your options are almost endless. You’ve hopefully taken care of which colors you will use and have the necessary materials you need but now what? Where do you start painting your home? How long should it take? What can I do to get my house painted faster and more efficiently? These are all questions homeowners have before they start this massive undertaking. Hopefully these questions and a few others will be answered here.

Where do I Start?

First you will need to go around and prep your house for painting. This will require power washing the house and scraping and priming any spots where old paint is peeling away from your house. Lastly prime any spots where there is bare wood or spots you have scraped.

The important part to prep the entire house first. This way you aren’t spending time switching between different sets of tools. It also helps minimize mistakes because you are scanning the whole house for the same flaws in your current paint job.

Now What? Prepare for a rainy day

When you take time out of your busy schedule to paint your house the last thing you want is for it to rain that day. You can protect against this by taking off the downspouts of your gutter system. These are the vertical shafts that channel water from your gutters to the ground below. They easily come off with a screw driver. I don’t recommend doing this if you plan to take multiple weeks to paint your house or if you live in an area where strong heavy rain storms are frequent. If you do choose to go ahead and take down your downspouts you also have the advantage of being able to not only paint on a rainy day but you also have less obstacles when your painting the rest of your house.

Your Ready to Start Painting Your House!

Now is the truely exciting part. Actually painting your house! First however, a few things to keep in mind. Always paint left to right top to bottom. Do this because your mind is used to working this way. You read left to right top to bottom. You are much less likely to make a mistake or miss a spot working this way. Working top to bottom is the most important because paint inevitablly will drip. It’s unavoidable but if your working top to bottom all you have to do is paint over it and you haven’t had to paint over where you already have.

Paint your siding and sofits first. In other words do the trim of your home last. Usually you will be more likely to mess up when you painting the siding of your house and accidentally paint a small bit of where you want your trim paint to be. You can easily paint over any spots your messed up when your painting the trim.

Ladder Movements Cost Time

Ladder movements take time so consider them carefully. Poor ladder placements mean you have to move your ladder more times than you need to. I’ve seen houses take hours longer than they should solely because ladders were poorly placed and they had to be moved around many more times than they should have.

When considering where to place your ladder think about how far you can safely reach with your brush or roller. The average distance a person can safely paint away from a ladder is 3 feet. When in doubt be a bit conservative. There is nothing worse than have to move your ladder because you can’t reach that extra inch.

Do All of Your Touch-ups Last

Don’t go back and fix your mistakes as you go. Make a mental note and fix them all at the end. This will save you time in the long run because you aren’t constantly going back and forth with your paints.

Final Words

Keep a rag with you at all times. They come in handy when you least expect it. If you take a break wrap your brush or roller in a damp rag and leave it in a shaddy spot. Never leave a brush or roller out in the sun uncovered. You can easily ruin a brush or roller this way. Last but certainly not least. Have fun!