Deciding whether to do DIY exterior house painting in San Ramon? Sure, it may be more challenging than painting the interior, but these tips may help you in making your exterior house painting job easier, quicker, and less time-consuming.
- Many people paint the exterior because they would like to change its appearance. If you want to change the color of your exterior, choose a color that is a shade or two darker for the new paint instead of a light-colored paint. It’s much easier to care for, less laborious, and less costly if you paint a darker shade over the existing lighter one than the other way around.
- We all know that cleaning is essential to a good painting job, but cleaning the exterior with just your brush or sponge is time-consuming, not to mention tiring. For quicker cleaning, use a pressure washer with the cleansing agent first for washing and finally plain water last for rinsing.
- Scraping the exterior thoroughly will give a smoother surface and thus a more even painting job. But this could take a lot of time. Here’s a tip to save time: scrape only the peeling and flaking paint, and don’t scrape areas where the paint still strongly adheres to the surface.
- When you prime, you usually do it in all areas of the house, but if you now want to conserve primer as well as time, you can apply it to only some portions that need it most. If the other areas of the house still look fine and won’t need much priming, then leave them out.
- Each side of the house is considered a big project itself already. So don’t paint the entire house at one time. Consider painting one side of the house and ignore the other sides for now. Then you can come back to paint the rest of the house the next day or any other day.
- Paint the harder and less interesting parts such as under the eaves first, and paint the more fun parts last. If you paint the fun parts first, you may start to think that your work is done, and you won’t be prompted any more to paint the more boring portions of the house.
- In some cases, a paint sprayer may make the job quick as far as the painting part itself is concerned. However, this actually entails an incredible amount of prep work, which includes masking areas that you don’t want to be painted. Plus, spraying may also cause some accidental spreading of paint on your lawn. If you strictly calculate the time allotted for each method, sometimes painting with a brush or roller may make your job a lot faster than spray painting.
- If you want professional looking results, do not skip the prep work. Prepping the surface may be your least favorite part — it takes too long and is a grueling task. Besides, you may be eager to begin the painting portion. Prepping includes cleaning the surface, repairing the flaws (such as filling the cracks with a spackle), and sanding.
Consider this: a properly-prepared surface will enable a new coat of paint to protect your house and keep it looking good for several years. A surface that isn’t prepped, on the other hand, will result in a poor finish. The topcoat may fade or worse, suffer surface flaws such as cracks and bubbles or blisters. These may lead you to do the extra effort of fixing these surface problems as well as re-painting the surface which will take more time and more money.
Remember though, there is no guarantee that these tips will give you the best results. A licensed painter will be better for that. However, you may use them if you want your exterior house painting in San Ramon done within a very short time.
