If you’ve ever painted your home, you have a great appreciation for how long it can take. Most people think painting is the easiest thing in the world, until they take the time to actually try it themselves. Painting a residential house is quite a process. First you need to make sure you scrape and sand down the home to properly prepare it for accepting primer. This is no easy task, the prep on an older house may take longer than the actual painting process.

After you’ve properly prepped the structure, then it’s time to apply the primer. Hopefully you have access to a sprayer or the job may take forever to do by hand. If you have a sprayer, make sure to mask off the windows and trim so you don’t get overspray on the areas that you don’t want painted. The house will need time to dry off from the freshly applied primer, so as long as the temperature is over 50 degrees that should happen in 24 hours. If you are painting in weather that is under 50 degrees than you need to use a special type of paint that works in that temperature.

After the primer has dried, it’s now time for the finish coat(s). If you picked a color that is much lighter than your existing color, you will have your work cut out for you as you might have to end up putting 2 to 3 coats of paint on the building to make sure the old color doesn’t bleed through. Usually you end up having to apply 2 coats of paint, but that is standard and will fade less in the sunlight, especially if you live in the southern parts of the US where the sun is out much more often.

Article originally published at Source by Chad R Fisher