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Painting the exterior of your house can be and is pretty big deal. Eventually, we usually put much more time and effort into the interior. And this is pretty understandable – we all like to feel nice and cosy inside, and to achieve that we do not need the exterior.
Hence, the outside is often a secondary priority. Maybe aside of the gardens which also tend to get well taken care of. However, we should not forget about the front, side and back elevation.
This is what helps to keep our house in overall good condition and present itself proudly in the neighbourhood.
You should keep the exterior in good condition, but should you pressure wash it before painting? This is probably one of the most heated discussions within the DIY and building world since “should you use primer or not”.
And believe us – not only in Cambridge, but overall UK, US, other countries and online.
Funnily enough, there is no right or wrong answer to that question. Obviously you can wash your house before painting, but the main question would be is it necessary?
And if yes, have you included drying time? Not allowing the wall to dry is probably the most common thing to be missed out.
And one of the most major reasons why the job is not properly done.
You can #pressureWash you house, but remember to include drying time and that it is not always necessary to do so #DIY
The list is not exhaustive, but the below three are probably the most common mistakes when it comes to pressure washing your exterior walls before painting:
Before we will go into the discussion for and against pressure washing in the next paragraph we have to clarify it’s just one of the ways to prepare the exterior of your house for painting.
The main goal is not to have it washed, but to clean the exterior walls from dirt and grease before painting. You can achieve it in several ways and one of them is pressure washing.
In some cases it is necessary to use it, but in others you can do it by more traditional method and clean house exterior without pressure washer:
Considering you do that on average only every ten years, and by the experience we can tell even less frequently, in my personal opinion it’s not worth it to do it on your own.
Of course, it’s your own free choice and you can save some money by doing so.
It may cost around £500-600 for an average job to paint yourself a house exterior. Nonetheless, you have to take into account the time you would spend on learning how to do it and actually doing it.
Usually it takes longer than done by professionals. Plus you have to ensure you do a decent job and, what’s the most important, you won’t hurt yourself.
You have to remember you will have to work quite high above the ground, so please be extra careful while doing the job. However, if you decide to give it a go below you can find some tips to help you started or just to understand the job better.
It may cost around £500-600 for an average job to paint yourself a house exterior #DIY #exteriorPaint
Let’s start from the very basic and establish the perfect frequency of painting your house elevation. This is greatly dependent on the climate and weather condition you live in.
Considering it is Cambridgeshire you would get 1495 hours of sunshine per year, which is also roughly the average for the UK. This is not the highest and even without this statistic we all know our climate is fairly humid.
In such conditions as in UK you should paint the exterior of your house every 7-10 years.
That is if the previous paint job has been done properly. What does it mean? It included good quality paint, done during good weather and well prepared surface.
It might be necessary to paint sooner than that if any of the above has not been met or you live in one of the big and busy cities.
One of the reasons why you shouldn’t wait too long to repaint your house is because flaking or peeling off paint makes it so much harder and longer to prepare the surface.
The painting frequency might be also different depending on the surface or finishing material used on your house elevation.
As mentioned at the beginning of this article it is pretty heated discussion, especially online. There are people who believe it is absolutely necessary and those who believe it should not be done at all.
The one and true answer is neither is perfect and both solutions have their pros and cons.
As a result, you cannot choose binary this one is right and that one is not. There are also other factors that playing big role in this game. Hence, we would like to go through some of them and try to make your decision at least a little bit more simple.
As you can see it’s not that straight forward.
There are quite few good reasons why to do it, but you have to agree there are also few why not to do it. Probably the most important once is that this solution can leave the water inside the walls. It is especially dangerous if you have siding finish. Why?
Because siding was designed to protect your house from water falling from above, at least more or less. Meanwhile pressure washing is usually performed from the bottom.
And it might be ok up until somewhere of eye level, but anything higher than that is almost certain to have water getting inside and behind the siding.
Another type of walls that are especially exposed are the ones made of bricks.
In particular the old ones, like many out there in Cambridge. You have to remember these tools are shooting water with pressure of 1500 psi and more, so you have to be extra careful your wall don’t get damaged.
Costs of repairing and repointing bricks can greatly exceed the expense of pressure washing. Plus you have to allow extra time for the wall to dry before painting.
It’s hard to say precisely how long you have to wait to paint the wall, but at least five to seven good weather days. Even longer for wood.
Generally speaking you should not wait longer than a month to avoid washing it again.
#pressureWashing does the job quickly and removes flaking paint and #mould with ease, but can leave water inside the walls and damage old bricks #oldHouse #renovation
Well, being 100% honest we do not recommend it. Scaffolding was designed to make working above the ground as safe as possible and not to create a fuss or extra work.
If for whatever reason your circumstances do not allow you to use it you are left with four choices to paint outside of your house without scaffolding:
Cherry picker is one of the safest and cheapest options, but also quite of a pain if you have change the position of it. Unless you have someone to help you out.
Extension on the other hand might appear like a perfect solution, but despite it might not seem so it is very demanding. Also, it will not allow you to prepare the wall properly, unless you have given a go with pressure washing.
Third option is probably the most common, but you have to make every effort to make it safe and be extra cautious about it.
Working from the ladder without proper training and knowledge how to secure it can be very dangerous.
You can read more about it here and here in articles by HSE (Health and Safety Executive). You might also consider buying a ladder stabilisers or invest in a professional ladder that can be converted into small scaffolding.
If you choose this option here is also a video to help you be as safe as possible.
Ultimately you can always go with the fourth option. It might be the least desired one since you were planning on saving some quid, but you have to answer yourself a question: is it really worth a hassle?
Safety note: Polda Builders do not hold any responsibility for misjudgment of what is sufficient for specific paint jobs. The above solutions are proven to work, but in this shape are purely informative and greatly dependent on how it’s being implemented.
Please take every possible effort in order to work safely and without unnecessary risks.
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2 Responses
I like all the points you have mentioned, these types of mistakes we all need to avoid. Using the Wrong Tool, Skipping the Primer etc can really make your painting effort waste. So keeping these in mind is useful. I found this hdpaintingservices.co.nz/ Having loads of data, if possible do have a look.
Yes, that’s exactly the case 🙂 thanks for your comment!