House Painting

Yes folks its a rainy day today so I'll take this as a sign to get in front of the computer as make some comments on painting your house.
If the only maintenance you do this summer is house painting then you are heading in the right direction. As with most things the longer you leave it to worse it gets.
Of course the most work is in the preparation and that just happens to be the most tedious boring part of the job. But the most important if you want all the effort you put into your house painting to last.
For this post I'll concentrate on the weatherboards.
Removing the old paint completely back to timber is the best way to go but unless your paint is blistering and flaking all over this is not really worth the effort. Its messy if you use a chemical stripper and a fire hazard if you try and burn it off.
For most house painting jobs its best is to use a tungsten scraper to get rid of the flaky stuff first.
Then hire or buy a belt sander and a box of sanding belts 80 or 100 grit and get in there with some manual labour to rough the surface up so the next coats have something to get a good grip on.
Fill any big holes and dents with Selleys Permafill or similar. On the parts where the bare timber is showing just spot prime with an oil based primer.
An orbital sander with some 180 to 240 grit pads is the best to finish the job so any large scouring from the bigger grit paper does not show through the top coats.
With all modern acrylic paints undercoating is not needed unless you can see bare timber, nails or filler.
You will need at and at least two top coats to finish but certain colours will need an extra coat to cover properly.
Sun has just come out so I'm off to check out some more jobs
Cheers Andre