[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]With the coming of spring and warmer weather, you are probably making spring cleaning plans. Painting your home is not only a great way to spruce up your house, but it is also a great preventative maintenance project, and painting the exterior is especially important. However, it can also be a huge undertaking. As with any major project, it is important that you understand some of the basics before you get started.
Make sure the conditions are right for painting. Weather will have a huge impact on your final coat. Temperature, humidity, and sunlight will all affect the finish and lifetime of your paint job. The wrong conditions can leave bubbles and splotches in your final coat and lead to premature cracking and flaking of the paint.
Speaking of lead, did you know that lead paint was not banned in the U.S. until 1978? If it has been a hot minute since your house was last painted, you may want to have some testing done before you begin scraping and stripping old paint. You do not want to put your family or yourself at risk of lead poisoning.
As with medicine and war, so it goes with exterior home painting. An ounce of preparation is worth a lot more than fixing your mistakes later. This cannot be stressed enough: most of your time will be spent in preparation. Before you can apply a new coat of paint, you have to make sure your surface is ready. You will have to strip any old, flaking paint (be extra careful of the lead chips!), possibly sand the last coat, thoroughly clean the surface, tape off and cover areas you don’t want painted, fix any imperfections in the surface with putty or other material, and then apply primer. Now, you are ready to paint. Make sure to monitor your progress as you paint, so as not leave any unsightly drips or brush strokes.
Instead of doing all of this work yourself, you could just call the pros at Prime Time Painting and let us handle it. We do this for a living, so can use your free time for what it is intended for -relaxing[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]
