On the Level
Perennial Painting Problems
By Terry Meany
It’s summer and thoughts turn to mint juleps in New Orleans, Yankees games in New York, anything to do with corn in Iowa and outdoor painting, regardless of where you live—unless you live in Seattle, which gets a decent summer the way everyone else gets leap year, that is, about every fourth time around. Painting is very much like the labor of Sisyphus, the ancient king of Corinth known for his cleverness and trickery, whose biggest mistake was offending Zeus and some of his immortal pals. As a punishment, once they got him to stay put in the underworld, Sisyphus was condemned to roll a large boulder up a steep hill, over and over again, because every time he got near the top, it rolled to the bottom, thus creating an eternity of frustration. Although this brings to mind any number of comparisons with certain members of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, both in terms of personalities and fantasized punishments, exterior painting and repainting, also makes for relevant comparisons.
Let’s face it: paint has a lot of limitations when it comes to protecting a wood building from the weather. Unlike, say, painting an automobile in a factory-controlled setting, you have only modest control, at best, of exterior painting conditions, including the temperature, the state of wood deterioration, previous paint buildup, the types of paint already applied, sun exposure, budget, who is applying the paint and how it’s being applied. On top of that, we’re asking a relatively thin paint film a few thousandths of an inch thick to stand up to rain, heat, fog, wind and creaking wood moving about.
Before the days of low emissions latex hybrid finishes with ingredients one can only understand in a rudimentary manner without a chemistry degree, paint selection was simple: you used oil-based paint—period. Painters mixed ingredients onsite into the 1930s, even though premixed canned paint had been available since the Civil War. The quality of the resultant on-the-job mixed paint varied, and industrialization brought much-needed uniform quality standards.
For years, old timers swore by lead-based oil paint while newbies swore at it, but long drying times, smelly solvents, and the effort and skill required applying oils sent paint chemists in the direction of water-based materials. Sherwin-Williams brought out the first popular water-based paint in 1941. Kem-Tone contained casein, corn protein, rosin, linseed oil, pigments and water. Along with the introduction of the paint roller, water-based paint came along just in time for the post-war suburban housing boom. Water-based finishes evolved into wholly synthetic latex paints, which are pretty much the biggest game in this town or any other when it comes to interior and exterior painting.
But Is Latex Always The Best Finish?
Normally, yes, especially on exteriors where oil-based paints are known to crack and check from brittleness. Latex goes with the flow, expands, moves with temperature changes and allows moisture to pass through from the interior. On interiors, however, applying oil-based alkyd paints on walls and ceilings in addition to the traditional application on woodwork might surprise you in the resulting durable and washable finish.
Lost in the choice of paint dance partners is a wide selection of interior oil paints. ICI’s Dulux paint line, for instance, offers velvet flat, low luster, semigloss, and a melamine paint for kitchens and baths. Like the oil-based paints of yesteryear, they will be smelly (and continue to smell for a day or two or three) and they will take longer to dry, but they form a very tough film that will hold up to multiple cleanings and can extend the time between future recoats. There’s a lot to be said for this in bathrooms and kitchens, which are a nuisance to paint because you have to work around fixtures and cabinets. It’s worth considering an interior oil finish the next time a rental unit is empty and the drying time and odor won’t affect a tenant.
Every paint job, regardless of the age or condition of the surface being painted, begins with preparation, anything from simply washing and brushing dust off to full-scale stripping, sanding and sealing. The more prep work, the higher the cost, and you have to consider whether the extra bucks will add enough to the paint’s life cycle to justify the expense.
There are no magic formulas here. I once stripped the west-facing windows in a bungalow and painted them in shady conditions out of sunlight in warm temperature. Basically, I did everything right and two years later, due to hairline splits in the grain of the wood, those windows with the most sun exposure ended up with cracked paint. I was not thrilled, but all I could do was repaint, albeit without anywhere near as much prep work as the initial paint job required.
Imagine this happening on a five-story apartment building. You can’t very well have a painter setting up every two or three years (this, of course, is one reason replacement vinyl windows are so popular—you never, ever paint them) and recoat, not that a painting contractor wouldn’t be thrilled with such prospects.
The best you can do with exterior wood is keep it sealed with a good quality acrylic paint, wash it between paint recoats to keep airborne pollution to a minimum, and figure on repainting the exposed sides—typically the south and the west—more often than the rest of the building. Does this seem tacky? That’s one viewpoint; the other is that it’s economical and even environmentally sound (you’re not creating a demand for paint you don’t need).
Masonry is a different animal than wood and easier by far to repaint. EWC (elastomeric wall covering) technology offers a thicker, longer lasting finish than standard exterior paint that is both flexible and able to fill in small cracks that can open up with weather changes. Elastomeric paint costs more than other house paints (and it should) and doesn’t spread as far per gallon, but as a rule it more than makes up for the additional costs by increasing the time between recoats.
Deck coatings are among the most frustrating paint jobs of all. Clear coats of water sealer are almost useless. Semitransparent stains have short lives and must be reapplied every few years to preserve the wood. Solid body stains are more like paint and, because their finish is so flat, don’t clean very easily and look dull in a hurry, although they last longer than semitransparent coatings. Porch and deck paint, either latex or oil, forms a good seal and cleans up well, but if the paint starts peeling, you’re stuck with more prep work between coats than the stain products require.
That said, I’m leaning more towards deck paint—a marine quality, oil-based coating—for my next deck finish. I’ve had it with the cleaning and sanding of two-year-old stained finishes that look great the day they’re applied and move downhill quickly as the seasons go by. I’m betting paint will be less work in the long run and do a better job of sealing the wood. If you really want to get serious about it, consider a one-part or two-part polyurethane finish, which is a little trickier to apply than standard oil deck paint, but should offer a longer working life.
Any painted floor surface subject to rain or other sources of water requires an anti-skid additive be mixed with the paint to help prevent people from slipping. Since you won’t want to clean a roller that’s been soaked with oil-based paint, buy a foam roller cover you can throwaway at the end of the job.
Feeling leery about painting a deck after all the usual advice against it? Experiment and paint part of a railing and see how it does after a year or two. If your building has multiple decks, paint one as the test case. It’s a small investment that could cut your future maintenance, and who wouldn’t want that?
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the viewpoint of SFAA or SF Apartment Magazine. Terry Meany is a former contractor and landlord. He is now a full-time writer and author of Working Windows: A Guide to the Repair and Restoration of Wood Windows, soon to be in its third edition from Lyons Press. He is cost conscious but not cheap, and he knows deferred maintenance always costs more in the end. He can be reached at tfmeany@msn.com. Copyright © 2008 SF Apartment Magazine. All rights reserved.