I am about to paint the entire exterior of a 2-story detached single family home. It has all wood siding, and wood trim around the windows. It is a rental property in an okay but not high-end area.
The plan is to paint it all white -- siding, trim, eaves, etc.
We are going to try spray painting most of it with a good airless paint sprayer, and then cutting in and finishing the rest with a brush and roller.
And, we are probably going to be using Home Depot's Behr Premium Plus Ultra Exterior Latex Paint.
My main question is, should we be painting it with flat paint, satin finish paint, or semi-gloss paint?
I am thinking, not semi-gloss, but maybe either flat or satin finish.
Any recommendations or suggestions? -- particularly about flat versus satin -- but also any other thoughts or suggestions to keep in mind.
Typically flat is used for the siding, semi-gloss for the trim. Some might go with a satin, which is one step up from flat, but it depends on the color and what you want it to look like. Flat shows the least imperfections in the surface, semi-gloss is much worse. Flat on the siding is the safest choice. If you want to go with satin, make sure to do a big test section first and see if you like how it looks.
It also depends on what's there already. For example if it hasn't been painted, has solid stain on it, then I would continue to use that.
If it's wood siding, I would not just spray it. You can spray it on then use a brush to back-brush it, work it in. Pros do that, to make it go faster. The majority of the time is spend getting paint up onto the surface and not having to go back and forth to a paint can cuts the time.
As always, surface prep, including power washing it first, is the most important part.
I agree on semi-gloss. You don't want a shiny house.
Satin also has a sheen, so my preference would be flat. The satin would be easier to clean, but who does that?
Not sure I like the all white plan though. I'd look for a body color that works well with the roof color. Having the trim a different color usually adds something to the appearance too.
Depends. Flat certainly shows imperfections less, shiny is easier to clean. One problem is that there is no standard (AFAIK) for sheen...it varies from manufacturer to manufacturer.
Our 20 year old stuccoed house was last painted six years ago. Originally and then we used semi-gloss. It does not look shiny, rain washes off the dirt.
The first time it was painted I planned to use an airless sprayer. Masking took so long I abandoned it and went with rollers. With a grid in a 5 gallon bucket of paint, application is fast. The second time it was painted, the pro painter used the same method.
In addition to the masking PITA, sprayed paint needs to be rolled too, might as well start that way.
I agree with someone else that all white would be boring.
Go for satin over flat for sure - but I would overcoat the trim with semi. More durable. for door frames etc. All white it'd going to look a bit like Casper.
Swung by a couple of the local name brand paint stores where the pro painters go to buy their paint. Get there really early as that's when the boys buy the day's supply.
Ask the painters, ask a few counter guys for their recommendations, The more gray hair, the better. They know the climate in your area and the kinds of siding on the houses.
Have a few boxes of donuts in your car to use as a thank you.
I used flat, but that's just me. Can you get an equivalent in a pint? Paint a couple of comparison panels, decide which you prefer, and call the losers a prime coat.
You have to be careful with painting a test area in a different sheen. I've done that with interior paint and even after two or three coats of the final selection, you can still see a difference where the underlying test spots were. And it's because of the texture difference, not the color. The colors were similar or the same. Outside, maybe it won't be noticeable, but it might be.
We started painting today and we will be going back tomorrow to finish. Rather than trying to answer each post individually, I'll try just responding here.
We decided to go with Behr Premium Plus Ultra, Exterior Satin Enamel,
9050 -- Ultra Pure White:
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We didn't want semi-gloss, and since we are not going to paint the trim a different color or with a different finish, we decided that a satin finish would end up looking the best. So far, it is looking pretty good.
I have seen other homes in the neighborhood that are all white -- white exterior wood siding, white trim, white eaves, etc. -- no contrasting colors. And, they look good. I actually own another house that is also painted all white. I agree that some contrasting colors also looks good, but all white fits in with what is in the area, and it fits in in the area where I have the other house. And, sticking with all white is saving us a lot of time.
The airless paint sprayer is a Graco that my friend owns. It is working well -- better and easier than I had expected. We did take the suggestion of buying the mesh screening/filter and we poured the paint through the mesh screen into a new and clean 5-gallon bucket that we also bought at Home Depot. The screens are cheap -- about $4.20 for two of them for 5-gallon pails. We had no clogs all day. My friend had used the same sprayer before, and he had not used the filter screens in the past, and he said he used to have lots of clogs each day that required him to clean the tip using some technique that he had figured out. But, no clogs today.
We are going through a lot more paint than we had expected. I estimated the square footage of the exterior to be about 2,200 square feet max -- a 25 by
30 house, maybe 20 feet high. I had thought that we may get about 350 - 400 square feet per gallon, but we are getting a lot less. The above link says to plan on 250 - 400 square feet per gallon, which I had not seen before. Seems like we are getting around 250 square feet per gallon so far.
To mask the windows and doors, we decided to try an idea that I had -- and it is working out well. I had a left over roll of "tar paper" (roofing paper?), and we decided to use that to mask the windows and doors etc. We just cut sections of it to cover each window and door and used push pins to pin them up on the windows etc. It's pretty easy, and most of the windows are the same size on this house, so as we moved around the house we could take the covers off of one window and use the same one to cover another window.
We are going back tomorrow, so maybe I will be able to take a few photos and post them to show how we did the tar paper routine for masking.
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