House paint that doesn't suck? Home restoration.

[day_trippr]

Pretty much have to strain exterior stain. Otoh, I've been using 100% acrylic for interior trim but haven't been straining it because it's freaky thick and would take forever.

Right now I'm thinking of switching all my exterior trim from solid stain to something water based. That's where the question arose. It would be strictly brush-on. I'll worry about the siding another year, I just did it last year...


Cheers!

 

[BruceH]

I went to research acrylic versus latex paint..... what a disaster! The first page that pops up on yahoo is apparently wrong as a commentor pointed out after that several other articles looked like they copied the same wrong information so I cam away with no credible information whatsoever.

I went to research acrylic versus latex paint..... what a disaster! The first page that pops up on yahoo is apparently wrong as a commentor pointed out after that several other articles looked like they copied the same wrong information so I cam away with no credible information whatsoever.

Many acrylic water based exterior house paints are advertised as "100% acrylic latex".

Here's an example pulled from the Sherwin-Williams website:




A-100 Exterior Acrylic Latex

• 4.3 Star rating out of 5
• 16 Reviews
• Write a Review

For trusted performance at a great value, A-100® is an A-1 choice. With a 100% acrylic formula that covers well and lasts, A-100 Exterior Latex Paint is a proven performer that meets your expectations and your need to keep an eye on the bottom line.

Here's one of the confusing internet definitions pulled from a duckduckgo search:

Acrylic latex paint is one of a number of water-based paints. It is 100 percent acrylic latex, and is regarded as the best-quality latex paint. Vinyl acrylic latex paints are the most popular acrylic latex paints on the market, as of 2010. Vinyl acrylic latex paint is the most economical because it uses a synthetic polymer, or plastic, as the binder. There are a numerous synthetic polymers that are used for various applications. One hundred percent acrylic resins costs twice as much as vinyl, so paint companies try to balance the two to keep costs down.

All I can take from this is that it's going to be acrylic and vinyl unless it's 100% acrylic latex.

In any case good luck with your house painting. I'm now a little over 50% done and everything is going well. I've been making sure to clean the area to be painted with a 5% bleach solution a few days prior to painting.

 

[Still Brewn]

Been a while since I have been on , I have been way too busy working on our house and have not even had time to brew. Thanks everyone for the input.
We finally settled on Glidden/ PPG Premium. We bought it when home depot was having their sale over the 4th. But the coolest thing I have learned from all of this is that I don't have to use a heat gun like I have been doing. I found a scraper that actually works and will remove all the paint down to bare wood without damaging it. I wish I had found one of these years ago! I found it while I was looking for something better to scrape the paint from the trim in a room we are refinishing and was tired of cleaning out the planer after every pass. It was effective but took just as long to remove the paint with the planer as with the heat gun and scraper. So anyway, I'm looking through the scrapers at the store and see one I had not seen before and decided to give a shot. Holy $hip Batman! Faster than the planer or heat gun and no damage/ gouging. When comparing the wood scraped with a heat gun the planer and the carbide scraper it was a night and day difference.

The one I first got from home depot has a sleight curve to it, I picked up a second blade that is perfectly straight from Lowe's and used it today to scrape the paint from where the edge of the shoe and floor will meet when I install it in this room and I have several curved and a triangle coming from Amazon to attack the trim on the outside of the house where there is crown moulding and other detailed trim.
The only issue I had with it was on fresh paint .... in the sun and 90+ degreese the paint would smear before scraping off.

So to sum up .... If you are going to be removing paint look for carbide blades you will not be sorry. Most of them are double edged. I'm still on my first edge on the ones I have used. The slightly curved one I got from home depot works great and will keep you from digging the corners into your wood. I haven't received the small shave hook blades yet but if they are as effective as the other carbide blades I have used I'm sure I will be more than pleased. Especially considering I have only scraped a dozen windows so far and have gone through to sets of steel shave hook blades and I still have 2 dozen more windows to go plus the detail moulding and crown moulding.

 

[Zuljin]

Primer and paint in one is a lie.

I'd much rather stain than paint the wooden window sills here, but...

40 years of paint has proven impossible to remove. I tired the orange paint peeler, and when they still made it, the green Jasco. The green Jasco was pretty good, just not good enough for whatever the original paint layers are. The orange stuff sucks. What's the best paint? Whatever they had in the late 1970s.

Olympia is fine for sheetrock when used over primer. It has held up well outside, too, again used over primer. Probably need to know that on the outside this is that 1970s engineered wood, not the "real wood" Still Brewn likely has. It's a budget paint though and that shows anywhere we used it that gets touched a lot. The cats and house plants on the "real wood" sills has rubbed it off. Clark+Kensington is what we used last. It's appreciably better than Olympia. It's a primer and paint concoction, but we primed first anyway with Kilz brand primer. We'll be using that combo instead of Olympia from now on.

What brand are these fantastic scrapers? I may try again to remove paint and then stain the sills inside. We've accepted that we will just replace baseboards.

 

[mongoose33]

Primer and paint in one is a lie.

I'd much rather stain than paint the wooden window sills here, but...

40 years of paint has proven impossible to remove. I tired the orange paint peeler, and when they still made it, the green Jasco. The green Jasco was pretty good, just not good enough for whatever the original paint layers are. The orange stuff sucks. What's the best paint? Whatever they had in the late 1970s.

Olympia is fine for sheetrock when used over primer. It has held up well outside, too, again used over primer. Probably need to know that on the outside this is that 1970s engineered wood, not the "real wood" Still Brewn likely has. It's a budget paint though and that shows anywhere we used it that gets touched a lot. The cats and house plants on the "real wood" sills has rubbed it off. Clark+Kensington is what we used last. It's appreciably better than Olympia. It's a primer and paint concoction, but we primed first anyway with Kilz brand primer. We'll be using that combo instead of Olympia from now on.

What brand are these fantastic scrapers? I may try again to remove paint and then stain the sills inside. We've accepted that we will just replace baseboards.

https://www.menards.com/main/paint/...188-c-8076.htm?tid=4341933591251343713&ipos=1

Red Devil makes them. They're counter-intuitive--rather than trying to slide it under the paint to scrape it off, the blade is nearly perpendicular to the surface from which the paint is removed.

It's the only scraper I'll use.

If you buy one, get a pack of extra blade or blades. THey don't last forever, and if you hit a nail or screw or something, you can nick 'em. But still well worth it.

 

[day_trippr]

A heat gun with a spreader and a sharp square putty knife can do wonders...

Cheers!

 

[Still Brewn]

Yes ... real wood and yes I would much rather have stained the wood than paint it but a hundred years of nail holes , scratches and gouges filled with painthave made that impossible. The house was originally stained and covered with shellac.

The scrapers are several brands, Purdy was the first one I got from home depot, then I picked up a straight blade from Lowe's and it was Warner brand, the last one is Bahco 625 ergo and that one came from Amazon and I'm waiting on additional shaped blades for it.

 

[Still Brewn]

I have tried sharpening the the curved blade that came with the Purdy scraper with great success. You cannot use a regular file with carbide you need to go get a diamond hone available at harbor freight to about 12 bucks. Get the4 sided one because it has a base so you don't have to use a clamp to hold it down. Keep your hands out of the path of the blade it will get very sharp! Just sharpening them a couple of times pays for it.
Use the 600 grit side. It only takes a dozen strokes or so depending on how dull you let it get before sharpening it.
Easiest to sharpen from the flat side as shown in the picture.

Keep the hone clean it will make things go faster. Also make sure you get one that is perfectly flat, I got one that had a little ridge in and the blade would get hung up in the ridge slowing things down

 

[Still Brewn]

Another note about these scrapers, I was able to remove the shellac from the floor of a room, recycle it and reapply it to the floor. I was Also able to remove hundred year old paint drips from a door without damaging the original finish too much. I also removed stickers from a mirror. USE CAUTION! When using on glass, carbide will scratch glass and with the right scratch it will break or shatter.

 

[Still Brewn]

As you can see from the picture I did do some damage to the original finish on the lower part of the door but i will repair that. That is the nice thing about shellac it can be repaired unlike polyurethane. Considering all the spots of paint I took off that amount of damage is nothing. There was also paint on the floor below that and into that closet. All of that woodwork in that room was once painted and the only thing I replaced was the shoe. There is no stain on that oak floor it is 3 layers of Garnett shellac (the original shellac from the floor) and 3 additional layers of blond shellac.

 

[day_trippr]

Ok, so screw exterior trim paint. I have seen the future...and once again it's all about plastics.

I have been busily replacing all kinds of finger jointed pine exterior trim used on our home with cellular PVC and so far I could not be more pleased. As our house had a white trim scheme and the Wolf CPVC line I'm using is bright white I'll never, ever have to scrape, sand and repaint (or replace) trim ever again, which considering how quickly finger jointed pine degrades in the Northeast is an huge win for me wrt maintenance.

I'm using Wolf trim boards (brickstop, 1x6, weatherseal for the garage doors) and with the Cortex plugged screw and driver system. The Cortex kits are tuned to the Wolf brand trim so the color match is dead nuts on - step back six feet and you can't find the plugs.

I've re-trimmed a bunch (5) of patio doors and today I finished re-trimming two garage doors and they look great. I still have another three patio doors and (counts fingers) 11 windows to do - all of it 2" brickstop.

Then I'll be turning my attention towards our deck railing. Two stories, 70-something linear feet of railing and something like 160 balusters per level, all of it pressure treated pine. If I can find a system with post wraps (for the lower level) and sleeves (for the upper level) that match I'm gonna tear everything out and do it over with either composite or PVC (still studying on it).

And once that's done I may consider having the whole house resided with Hardie board (no love here for vinyl siding). Then - theoretically - I won't have to do anything to the outside of the house save for the occasional power wash. I like the sound of that...

Cheers!

 

[Still Brewn]

Plastics are great for a while and i did replace a section of drip edge with one made of pvc I have also seen what happens when the house next door burns or when hail shatters it and when it gets so cold outside you would think hell froze over and it gets hit solidly by something hard. But I have been thinking about replacing all of the drip edge with pvc because it has been the biggest failure point on our house

 

[Still Brewn]

I finally got to start scraping the exterior of the house with my new scrapers. In all my excitement about how well they work I forgot to take into account one thing..... I still have to be on a ladder 20 feet in the air and apply pressure to the scraper handle. It still sucks to remove paint and there are areas where I am going to have to break out the heat gun. I really don't know how professionals stand on a ladder for hours at a time doing this. And of course it is suppose to rain for the next 2 days.

 

[smata67]

I've done my own painting, interior and exterior, for 30 years. I have only used SW products and have had great success. In fact, I use so much, I'm in their system to get the Contractor discount, so I pay 40% less than list. Good paint costs money, there are no bargains. For exterior and interior I have used SW SuperPaint at $60/gal and it has lasted 20 years. I've lately switched to Duration at $80/gal (mainly for trim, my current house is hard coat stucco). Both are 100% acrylic latex paints. SW runs occasional sales, so you could get these at 40% off or pester them and buy alot, they may give you the Contractor discount if you deal with the manager. Hit or miss on quality of personnel in these stores, but some guys are absolutely fantastic, worth their weight in gold if you find one. Go to another store if the people you are dealing with are half-assed, they are out there. SuperPaint is a great product, been around a long time and is good enough. Their exterior latex primer is what I would use over both oil or latex old coats. A-100 alkyd primer, if you are priming bare wood only or exposing bare spots, is a great product, but otherwise, the A-100 is an inferior "Contractor Grade" paint line for house builders and such not concerned with longevity. Stay away from it. For your stucco, I can't help with the paint, but I just resurfaced my house with Acrocrete Acrotex at about $3/SF. The house looks new. I had some deterioration and cracking issues and I could not be more pleased. Been on there for 3 years now and gets hit with some severe conditions in areas. I hired a Contractor for this, an acrylic cementitious base is trowelled onto all surfaces (Acrobase 60) to end up smooth and a fiber mesh is imbedded to span any potential cracking. Once dried, the Acrotex finish is applied with the finish pattern of your choice. This is an all acrylic system, ends up about 1/10" thick on the existing stucco. Fantastic alternative to painting, you can change the color and the swirl pattern, solves issues if you have them. The only problem is finding a good installer, there is a workmanship aspect that makes it a bit trickier than painting. An old house like this, where alot of scraping is needed, is a prime candidate for the new PVA coating restoration systems like Zinnser Peel Stop. You basically scrape off the loose material and brush it on. It can be rolled or sprayed, but the brush gets in there good. It is fairly inexpensive (it is basically watered down glue) and works like gangbusters to hold everything back to the surface. You then prime and paint as usual over it. It is a surface treatment. You will not end up with a smooth surface, but cuts the scraping work by 90%. There are several products out there and they are of varying viscocities, you can do some testing with them to see which one works best on your surface. The Peel Stop is thinner than paint and it gave good results for me, I was painting over oil primed cedar shakes with 4 or 5 coats of deteriorating paint and I would not do that job any different. One last word about working on ladders, determine how long you can work before getting too fatigued, set a timer, and quit when the time is up. Accidents happen when you are fatigued and there is a tendency to keep going beyond ones limitations if you don't do this type of work often.

 

[Still Brewn]

Sw lost my business because of the sales reps and because I would get paint from them that would clog may machines every time. It was also old enough that it would remain tacky for hours or days after it was applied. When you ar striping parking lots time is the most important thing because you are working on 4 people's schedules.... your customer, their customers, your supplier (which shouldn't be) you your other accounts. They compensated me several times for old paint that had to be repainted but losing $200 an hour per 2 man crew adds up when you can't get to other account. There were also a number of times when I would call my rep and not get a call back for days resulting in 1time losing an account because I couldn't get paint in time, several times having to delay accounts because paint wasn't available and one time I had to stop in the middle of an account because i couldn't get a part in time resulting in a lot that was half painted for more than a week. Clogged machines cost money, chemicals to flush the machine, someone to clean it, someone to filter the paint, disposal of the waste, cost of wasted paint. Every clog was costing me about $100 times that by 4 crews several times a year. After several times we started filtering everything but that was still costing around $50 in wasted paint and man hours, not to mention the filters and accidental spills and disposal. And that doesn't even take into account the number of parking lots I had to restripe because of tacky paint. I kind of did a rough estimate of what it cost me over a 2 year period that I used them and it was enough that I could have cut a month off my schedule both years.

 

[kh54s10]

I recently bought a new house. There was a 5 gallon bucket of SW Master Hide interior paint in the garage. I don't know where the Master Hide fits in the SW line up but it is the second WORST paint I have ever used. The worst was Americas Finest that sold for about $10/gallon. Looked it up... $55.09/gallon!!! IMO it is not worth more than $20 a gallon. Behr Premium Plus flat at $25.98 is a lot better. Why pay twice as much for a name?

 

[kenmunkholm]

Benjamin Moore Arborcoat solid…

Built a Craftsman/shingle style home in 2000-2003. Every one of the 17,000 cedar shingles was hand painted on all 5 sides, then installed as a rain screen wall on 1x strapping. This was Cloverdale top of the line oil base. Chalked in 4-5 years.

Went with Arborcoat the second time. One coat, water base solid. Still going strong 10ish years later.
Prep was only a light brushing with a scrub brush.

I am certainly a believer in that product.

 

[MaxStout]

Worst deck stain I have ever used: Behr DeckOver. I re-stained my deck and pergola 2 years ago. All the wood is green treated, over 15 years old, so moisture had long since stabilized. I sanded down to bare wood, 80 grit with a random orbit sander. Applied two coats of the finish per instructions on a cool, overcast day.

Now 2 years later the finish is flaking off. If anyone knows of a good opaque deck stain that will adhere well and last several years, I'm all ears, as I'll be re-staining this fall.

 

[Dland]

Ben Moore heavy body stain seems to hold up on some of the fancy fences I install, at least as good as anything these days.

I know one old house painter who uses Rustolium, says it is the only decent oil based paint still available. I will add he is also noted for prepping very well. Paints rich peoples' houses by the water.

Had to replace some trim boards last year, went w red cedar. So house has some dark green trim, some cedar. Will go to all cedar as it needs to be replaced.

 

[day_trippr]

I seem to remember high solids stains not being recommended for horizontal applications - like deck boards and horizontal railing members. I can say Cabot alkyd solid "oil" stain highly sucks at that and I wouldn't recommend it to an enemy if I had any

I gave up with deck finishes and went with Trex. That I can recommend without reservation...

Cheers!

 

[ncbrewer]

I applied Cabot 1400 series semi-solid stain on my deck 16 years ago and it's still good. It was painted when I moved in, and I had to repaint every 1 1/2 - 2 years. Sanded off the paint and stained it instead.

 

[day_trippr]

Semi-solid /= solid. Indeed semi-solid (aka semi-transparent) is what is generally recommended for deck planking...

Cheers!

 

[ncbrewer]

Cabot has the extra category of semi-solid. They have translucent, semi-transparent, semi-solid, and solid. Their websites shows the semi-solid as the best recommendation for decks.

 

[MaxStout]

I seem to remember high solids stains not being recommended for horizontal applications - like deck boards and horizontal railing members. I can say Cabot alkyd solid "oil" stain highly sucks at that and I wouldn't recommend it to an enemy if I had any

I gave up with deck finishes and went with Trex. That I can recommend without reservation...

Cheers!

That's my other option and I'm leaning toward that more and more as I remember what fun it was to sand all day. Pay the $$$, buy once, cry once.