Brushing up

While summer is the best time of year to paint the exterior of your home in the Inland Northwest, now is the time to start planning.

Whether you do the whole job yourself, do just small touch-ups or have your home’s exterior painted by professionals, it helps to understand the tools and steps it takes to get it done.

Exterior painting can be broken into two phases: preparing the surface and then painting. Of the two, preparation can be more critical and time-consuming.

Along with the huge effort it takes to paint a large home, the arduous and dirty work of preparation is often what puts homeowners off the most from doing their own work. However, if a prep job is not done correctly, the paint you apply won’t stick properly, won’t last as long and won’t protect your home’s surface areas.

Because most home exterior painting is done over existing paint, let’s tackle that approach.

Before painting, you need to deal with any loose paint, areas where the paint has worn through to the surface beneath, or surface cracks or dents. For this work you may need:

• At least one putty knife, preferably two, in different blade widths. You can use these to patch dents and cracks, and to reseal caulking around windows.

• A scraping tool. Make sure this has a handle with a length and style so that you won’t scrape your knuckles.

• A wire brush with a sturdy handle.

• Sandpaper in varying degrees of coarseness.

• An electric hand sander (optional).

• Wood, masonry or stucco filler.

• Caulk and a caulking gun. Get a high-quality gun. The cheap ones won’t work well and will drive you crazy.

• Paint-stripping chemical (optional).

If you have a one-story house, you may only need a stepladder. But stepladder safety depends on both sides of the ladder resting evenly. Often a home’s surrounding landscape is not level. In that case, or if you have a two-story or taller home, you may need an extension ladder.

Use a ladder that is rated to support the weight you’ll place on it. The amount of weight the ladder can safely hold is listed on its side.

For a really large job, you may want to consider using a paint sprayer as well as rollers and brushes. Sprayers are used more for large areas, but they can also be used on trim.

Using a sprayer on either type of area usually calls for covering the other area while the sprayer is being used. That will require more time spent on covering the surfaces as well as money spent for the coverings themselves. You should consider these factors to determine whether it’s worth your effort.

When it comes to paintbrushes, there are lots of choices in size, quality and shape. Some brushes are designed for particular areas or tasks, such as painting trim. Before you buy, make a list of what types of painting you’ll be doing. Take that with you when you buy brushes to make sure you get the right ones.

One question frequently asked is: “Why should I pay $20 for one paintbrush when another that looks exactly like it goes for $3?”

The answer is twofold: A top-quality paintbrush will do a better job, and it will make the job go easier and quicker, especially for an amateur painter.

Higher-priced brushes typically have a tapered end. There are shorter bristles on the outside, longer ones in the center. This tapering of bristles gives the painter more control of the brush and leaves fewer or no brush marks.

If you have ever used a cheap paintbrush, you know that it often will leave marks and even bristles as you paint. A top-quality brush will rarely do this.

Better brushes also hold more paint. You’ll spend less time getting paint from the can to the surface.

Paintbrushes come with a variety of bristle types. Natural bristles frequently come from Chinese boars. Most fall into three categories: black, white and oxhair.

Use a brush with natural bristles if you’re painting with an oil or alkyd paint, stain, varnish, shellac or lacquer. However, if you use a latex paint, don’t use a brush with natural bristles. Instead use synthetic brushes, which come in dyed nylon, dyed black nylon and dyed nylon/polyester. The nylon/polyester type is usually considered the best because it has good stiffness and retention. Finally, many professional painters prefer brushes with wooden handles, saying they feel more comfortable in grip and balance.

Other paint tools you’ll likely need include:

• Drop cloths. These come in materials such as canvas or nylon. Canvas costs a bit more, but paint will dry faster on a canvas surface and won’t puddle as it will on nylon.

• Rollers of different sizes. Get the kind that has a handle with a threaded interior, which lets you screw it onto an extension pole to reach high areas. For roller covers, have a variety of naps such as a 3/16 -inch or 3/8 -inch for painting smooth indoor surfaces, and 3/4 -inch and 1 1/4 -inch for rough surfaces. Again, go for quality and you will get smoother results, and the cover will hold more paint, reducing the amount of time you need to dip it back into the pan.

• Paint roller pans. The better ones are of a more solid material — a heavier plastic or thicker metal — and are less likely to bend and spill.

• Foam paint pads in different sizes to reach into corners and do edging. They tend not to drip or spatter, and speed up the trim work.

• A painter’s mitt for such things as pipes and railings. You dip the mitt in paint, then surround the pipe or railing and smooth the paint on it.

• An extension pole for hard-to-reach higher areas. These poles come in several lengths, so figure what length you’ll need before purchasing. The shorter a pole, the easier it is to handle.

• Masking tape. Use this to keep paint off adjacent surfaces, such as glass next to window frames. A wider tape makes slop-over less likely. Some of the professional painter-quality masking tape is easier to work with and remove.

Be sure to make a list of the exact items you’ll need or a list of the types of things you plan to paint before you leave home. That will help the salesperson at the paint store or home center assist you in picking the right tools.

Resources

One of the best sources of information on painting, inside or out, is the Rohm and Haas Paint Quality Institute. Even the pros recommend this comprehensive Web site, which offers extensive advice on paint, materials, preparation and even choosing colors and calculating how much paint you need. Just click on www.paintquality.com.

Spraying paint

Paint sprayers can be a tremendous help, but matching the right one to the type of work you’ll do is essential.

Paint sprayers are great for handling large areas or uneven surfaces.

Sprayers range in price from under $100 to more than $1,500 and come in two types: airless and air-powered. Airless sprayers are powered by electricity. Air-powered sprayers require a compressor.

Airless sprayers are most often used by do-it-yourselfers. The parts of an electric airless sprayer include a container for the paint, a motor, high-pressure pump, pressure regulator, housing and handle.

There are a number of types of airless sprayers, but the ones you might consider best for house painting include the cup gun, piston pump and diaphragm pump.

• A cup gun type is usually the least expensive, often priced around $100. Another plus is that it can accommodate relatively thick latex paints and much thinner stains. This is the type of sprayer that is used most often by do-it-yourselfers.

Disadvantages include a relative lack of power compared with other types of airless sprayers and air-powered models. A cup gun sprayer also may not be able to handle the thickest paints.

While the cup gun sprayer may not be best for large exterior paint jobs, it may be appropriate for smaller jobs. It holds a limited amount of paint because of the size of the cup.

• The diaphragm pump is the next step up. It uses a diaphragm expanding and contracting to bring in and force out the paint. It will handle fairly thick paints but sometimes tends to overspray because of its power. Good for large jobs. You can buy a good one starting around $250.

• The piston pump variety is the most powerful and costs the most — sometimes $1,000 or more — but should easily handle the thickest paints. Again, as its name denotes, a piston forces out the paint.

Professionals use a sprayer gun powered by an air compressor. The sprayer costs $100 to $300 or more. A hose to carry the paint from the can to the sprayer costs around $125. Compressors cost $150 to more than $1,000. (Compressors can be used for a variety of other purposes and with many other air-powered tools.)

These systems are designed for major painting work, but they are not without drawbacks. The air-powered sprayer gun can’t spray thick paint, and there’s often a lot of overspray. You have to be skilled at using the tool to be efficient.

With both air-powered and airless sprayers, you will need to buy tips. Your sprayer may come with a tip, or you may buy one separately. Adjustable tips are best, accommodating wide and narrow spray choices.

If you buy a separate tip, you should know what the numbers mean on it.

The first digit indicates half the width of the spray measured from 12 inches between the tip and the object being sprayed.

The rest of the number indicates the size of the opening in thousandths of an inch.

So, the number 810 on a tip would tell you that the tip would spray a 16-inch-wide swath when held 12 inches away. The opening is 10 thousandths of an inch wide.

The size of the opening makes it possible for you to judge whether the sprayer can handle certain types of solutions. Information that comes with the sprayer may indicate it can handle thin or thick paints, stains or enamels in just those words, but it also may indicate the size of the opening that would work best for each one.

Usually, for example, the smaller openings — say, .009 to .013 — can easily handle stains, water sealers and lacquers. Openings at the larger end of the scale — say, .015 to .019 — may be best for exterior latex paints.

So, after all this, which sprayer should you buy?

This depends on the paint projects you might tackle and what you want to spend.

Keep in mind something else as well. Most do-it-yourselfers who use sprayers frequently don’t clean them properly. There’s a tendency to try to do a lot at one time, then set the sprayer down while you take a break. Or maybe you didn’t clean it thoroughly after the last big job. The next time you try to use it, the tip or other parts are clogged, and you give up on the device.

If you’re the type who cleans tools properly afterward and follows guides on thickness of paint to use, a good-quality sprayer is worth the investment.