04 Oct House painting – most common errors. Part 1. Prepartation

Part 1. Preparation.

This article is a result of our own and the others’ mistakes. Obviously we’re not going to admit to any, that’s why we safely claim to have heard about them.
In part one we present the traps waiting for us before we even lift the paint bucket.
Remember, smart people learn from the others’ mistakes.

1. Cheap materials

The fundamental mistake, which we cannot afford if we want to have a well-painted house for years, is saving overly on paint and tools.
There’s a reason why good products cost more than poor products.
In my opinion the only products which are not worth spending too much money on are some fanciful buckets or trays and additional brushes (speaking of those used to push the paint into hard accessible places – the main brush should be as good as possible and this is half the battle).

2. Too high pressure in the pressure washer

While cleaning the house, apparently nice and easy, you may come across lots of hazards.
Firstly, choosing the pressure washer is an individual issue, we don’t want to disadvise anything, but remember you may do harm.
It’s mainly about too high pressure. It may end up badly, particularly if we use a long wash pipe and there’s a lot of breeze rising in the air and we cannot see what’s happening to the wood. It gets destroyed, the pressure carves different shapes in it.
There’s no better advice to it than caution. Let’s observe and react.

3. Pressure washer and lack of isolation

Another trap, which refers mostly to simple summer houses rather than standard ones having a multilayer wall construction, is the possibility to overflow the inside through the cracks between the facade boards.
It may turn out that inside our house we’ll find half of the water that came out of the pressure washer’s head within one hour of cleaning. We wouldn’t wish it on anybody.

4. Destroying the surface we’re not going to use with detergent

Detergent is a very strong agent. One of the ways it works is taking the gloss off the old skin of paint. That is our desire only on the surfaces we’re going to paint. It’s worse with the other ones.
First of all, we should ask our neighbour to park their cars far from our house. The spray may spread far while washing.
Second of all, we should be careful not to spill the undiluted preparation on the terrace. It’s advisable to protect it with cover foil while washing.
Third of all, we shouldn’t leave the preparation on the walls longer than recommended by the producer.
We should rinse it off thoroughly, paying special attention to washing it off the window panes – people often forget about it and the windows need to be cleaned once again.
We should rinse the whole terrace even if it was protected with the foil.

5. Tiny bits of old paint scattered all around the lawn.

We are sometimes enthusiastic about scratching off loose parts of the old layer, forgetting it’s worth covering the bed with foil or paper.
Otherwise, after we finish the work we realise there are thousands of paint chips scattered among the blades of grass and it will take as much time as painting the walls (double layer) to collect them.

6. Leaving the tapes too long

There are two scenarios. Either we decide to stick the protection tape at a free weekend one month before the scheduled painting or, being exhausted with painting, we decide to take the tape off at a free weekend one month later.
The outcome is always the same – a taking-off nightmare. The tape tears in hundreds tiny pieces and we fight with our nails or all knives possible interchangeably.
And it’s enough to take the tapes off right after the last layer dries out.
PS. We’ll get a similar result to the one described in the two abovementioned scenarios if we buy the cheapest tape available. Or if we use tapes which are not dedicated to be used outdoors – the sun and rain will have an impact.

7. Lack of protection on all of the ways

While protecting the bed around the house we usually think only about all the walls we’re going to paint. But we forget we’ll be entering the house or the garage and we leave those passages unprotected. A souvenir in the form of shoeprints stays longer with us.