House Painters San Antonio Prep Steps for the House

If you're one of the fortunate ones, just an easywash-down is all your house needs before re- painting it. If there's caked on dirt, first hit it with your hose or power washer to loosen it up, then you can hit it with a brush and soapy warm water.

For those not so blessed, they'll have to roll up their sleeves because a somewhat more involved job is just ahead for them. However, if the job is done properly, expert house painters say, not only will the whole job look better, but, in the run run, it should look goodfor at least another 8 - 10 years.

Start with a complete examination of the exterior of the house or building for areas for the paint to be removed - not just the exterior walls but also under the gables, around all the windows and doors, and along the foundation. Look for split shingles and ripped siding, popped nails, flaking or blistering paint, mildew, and rust stains.When you've identified all the areas that need your attention, roll up your sleeves and get after it.

The tools you'll need to remove paint with are a putty knife with a wide blade and a hard wire brush. Make sure you get up under those ridges in that clapboard siding, and that goes for downspouts and gutters too. To work faster on metal, use a circular wire brush and an electric drill to quickly and easily remove stubborn paint and rust. If you're facing a heavier-duty paint removal job, obtain a sharp pull scraper; it uses a sharp, replaceable blade that in a single pass can remove old paint down to bare wood. You need to ensure that the scraper blade stays at a perpendicular angle to the wood's surface. Applying fairly firm pressure while dragging it along the surface, make sure you also keep the blade perfectly flat to avoid marring the wood's surface.

If all you need to smooth out are a few small areas, just wrap a piece of sandpaper around a small block of wood and sand it down with that. When taking on larger jobs, most professionals use an electric orbital sander for paint removal and to smooth out rough areas. Remove the old paint and smooth out any rough edges at the same time by moving it evenly both vertically and horizontally. Electric sanders like disc sanders and belt sanders shouldn't be used on wood due to the scars they leave in the wood's surface.

When the paint is really built up, melting it off is usually easier to do than scraping it off. Professional house painters often use electric paint removers with heating elements that liquify the old paint. The device typically has a built-in scraper to remove the paint with. Garbed in all the necessary protective gear, the heating element raises the temperature of the surface until the paint starts to liquify. The paint is removed by pulling the heat gun firmly over the painted surface, the built-in scraper removing the paint as it heats other areas.

You can use liquid paint removers effectively on small jobs. On larger jobs, though, they're much more expensive to use, and can ruin a perfectly good paint job just by dripping onto an already-painted surface.

Once all the old paint has been removed, you should apply a high quality primer to some of the more distressed areas, particularly if your paint-removal process exposed raw wood or bare metal. The type of primer you use depends on the kind of paint you'll be applying later. For latex paint use latex primers; for solvent-thinned paints, use solvent-thinned primers; and for metals, use metal primers. Not only do these types of coatings provide extra protection against the elements, they also form a firm foundation for finishing paints. As a rule, priming is always required when you're working on new wood.

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