coloured stripe


Painting, decorating and home improvement tips blog

Order of painting an exterior of a house

Posted by Adrian
July 2nd, 2009

Graphic of exterior of house

How to decorate an exterior, and in which order.

If you have fascias and soffits to paint, do these first.
It’s always best to remove the gutters so you can paint behind them properly; this is where they can start to rot. It’s also a good time to clean out the gutters and wash them before putting them back.
If the fascias and soffits are dirty, give them a wash down first, and then dry them off. Now rub them down, remove any flaking paint. If you have any bare wood paint them with a primer.
Next undercoat them with a suitable undercoat, then you can topcoat them with a gloss.
Obviously if your fascias and soffits are stained, you would simply do as above but paint them with two or more coats of stain rather than primer, undercoat and topcoat.

Next if your walls are painted, paint these next.
Before you jump straight in, rub your hand over the wall, look at your hand; does it have a powder on it? If so this means the paint already on the wall has been affected by the sun and weather. You will need to ‘stabilise’ the walls first, this sounds dramatic and as if the walls are about to fall down, but it isn’t. All you need to do is buy some ‘stabilising solution’ and brush it onto the walls. What this solution does is ‘stick’ and seals the old paint giving you a good surface to paint onto.

If you don’t stabilise the walls first all you are doing is painting over a powdery dust and the new paint will not last very long and could well start to come off!
If you have any cracks you should fill these also, depending on the size of crack, will determine on the type of filler you use.
You may also want to mask up your windows if they are UPVC before you start with the masonry paint, especially brown wood effect as any paint on these can be really hard to remove!

Now the masonry work is done you can paint the doors and windows if they aren’t UPVC. You will need to do the same as you did with the fascias and soffits, wash, rub down, prime it needed, undercoat and topcoat, or two or more coats of wood stain.

Finally if you have one and it is painted, paint the plinth. This will give it the finishing touch.

Now, stand back and admire your work.

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in Decorating Tips | 3 Comments »




3 Responses to “Order of painting an exterior of a house”

  1. Adrian Says:

    Not sure which order to paint a room in, take a look here : http://www.propertydecorating.co.uk/blog/?p=32

    Date posted : April 30th, 2010 at 3:47 pm
  2. Paul Martin Says:

    Thanks for these great tips. We had a powdery substance on the walls at our home so after reading this post I bought some stabilising solution and fixed the problem! Also we had damaged Soffits so we had to replace them. cheers for the help!

    Date posted : September 12th, 2011 at 12:56 pm
  3. Exterior wall coatings Says:

    “Now, stand back and admire your work.”

    …….make sure whoever reads this handy article doesn’t take your advice when up a ladder or on scaffolding! LOL!

    but seriously that does happen. A good article, easy to understand for the common man, and its nice to see someone actually writing about preparation. Many DIY tips just hardly mention that bit. Nice one.

    Date posted : March 26th, 2013 at 12:34 pm

Leave a Comment




Top

My Paintbrush logo