Exterior Prep

Cleanliness is next to Godliness when it comes to preparation and painting techniques. First understand the lack of good prep and the havoc it has caused many Victorian homes over time.

Let me give you a history lesson about previous coats of paint and the many common causes of premature paint failure.

The Victorian picture (above right) is a good example of previous poor prep.

As mentioned elsewhere on our site, interior condensation build-up is the most likely cause of many a mysterious paint failure but to add insult to injury-just think about the history of the several previous coats of contaminated paint that have been applied over unsound surfaces.

Painters used pure white lead powder and mixed it with linseed oil as the first initial coat of primer applied to the house at the turn of the 20th Century.

See where I removed the paint down to the primer just above the sill? This is pure white lead primer used over 100 years old and still holding on except now there are moisture, mildew and lead contamination problems to contend with!

What a mess right? To contend with moisture and dry rot conditions first we obviously have to either wait or create a way to dry out and re-harden the wood, remove the mildew and keep the punky wood from disintegrating when pressure washing. Sound like a challenge? You bet and a delicate one! Its completed using an in depth process of digging down to remove punky wood, chemically rehardening the wood, patching with epoxy filler, resanding, repriming and finally painting using two coats. This kind of delicate repair is a science in itself best left to qualified professionals! When done correctly you can rebuild and save the integrity of historical wood for years.

Since oil-based paint 100 years ago was formulated from lead and mercury (and both being forms of iron) lead paint was "static" meaning it had no give with the natural expansion and contraction of the woods passing seasons. As wood gave by expansion and contraction, lead based paint with no give and contaminated previous coatings did not bond the oil-paint to the surface well and formed hairline cracks creating alligator skin between successive contaminated coats.

All oil-based paint took overnight to cure or 24 hours between coats. Allow the wind to kick up off the river and dust and dirt would collect and stick on the new coating before it was throughly cured creating contamination. Can you envision a painter resanding the contaminated dirt and dust off the newly fresh coated surface before appling the second coat come the next day? Probably not! Painters would put the second coat on the house usually 24 hours later or when it was safe enough to put the ladder back onto the painted surface without marring the previous coating. Thsi was usually too soon between coats.

50 to 100 years ago pressure washers hadn't been invented yet so do you think the painter would climb a 40 foot ladder to hand scrub down the entire house to remove mildew before he painted? He would just paint over the barely cured previous contaminated paint and maybe scrape off the mildew before he painted.

Front porch ceilings are the worst for alligatoring because they have ocean salt effloressence build up painted over. Lead paint was poor in effective binders and pigments in the paint. Have you ever ran your finger over a painted surface to find powder on your finger? Ultraviolet sunlight oxidizes and damages the painted surface over time and many times the powdering surface was painted over creating an in-effective surface for the new paint to bond to correctly.

Are you starting to get the picture of how hard its going to be for us to first prep your house before the new paint will stick? WOW! Now, not only do contaminated coatings exist but several successive coats are questionably contaminated on the surface from the history of probably 20 coats or more in 100 years time!

When a house has improper ventilation-unpassable interior moisture builds up trying to come through the backside of unbreathable horizontal wood siding and old brittle lead paint is pushed off the surface and causes wood to rot! It only makes sense that interior vapor build up can't be drawn through siding when a lead based coating already existed on the surface as the first coat of primer!

Other causes like carpenter ants, solvent or air entrapment blistering, powder post beetles and termites contibute to paint problems too but wood can be repaired using epoxy products designed specifically for these purposes.

Please understand the love, labor and time that goes into making the needed repairs for preserving historic wood structures! Its rewarding work that costs a little more but the beauty in the end result makes it worth the extra prep and painting time!