Now is the time to paint the exterior of your home. It is best to start painting on the sunny side of your home first and the reason for that is because it’s likely there is still dew on the shaded side of your home in the morning.
Tip: Your house must be perfectly dry in order to start painting.
Before you start painting, it is a good idea to keep an eye on the weather for rain or snow. You don’t want to start painting only to stop abruptly because of the weather.
How warm does it have to be in order to paint your home? For most paints it typically has to be 37 degrees or warmer in order to paint the exterior of your house. Now if you are painting two coats of paint on your house and it is 55 degrees or cooler for the day, it is a good idea to paint the first coat one day and apply the second coat the day after.
If you live in a really dry climate, like Denver, and your painting in the summer months, you can defiantly apply two coats in one day. However, the more humid climates in the south, it is still recommended to paint only one coat per day.
Note: How to use an airless paint sprayer. I’m sure the guy at the rental store showed you how to use the airless (typically with his limited experience of actually painting a house), so hopefully I can offer you a couple new ideas on how to paint your home using an airless paint sprayer.
When you first get the airless home, set it in the middle of the area that you would like to start painting. Typically the length of the hose is around 50′. Stretch out the hose prior to painting so that you don’t have to worry about unraveling it while you are painting on a ladder. It is a good idea to have a 100′ extension cord so that you can bring the airless anywhere you wish to paint without any restrictions.
Tip: before you plug in the airless into the extension cord, MAKE SURE THE AIRLESS IS OFF! You don’t want the airless to start pumping without paint!
Now, when you go to set up the airless, before you turn it on, it’s a good rule of thumb to have a second empty bucket next to your bucket of paint. I’ll explain why in a second. Place both buckets side by side and place the intake hose (with the wire mesh filter end) into your 5 gallon bucket of paint while the primer hose (usually a lot smaller, about the size of a pencil’ish) is placed in the empty bucket of paint. Before you turn on the machine make sure that the airless is set to prime the machine first. There is a primer valve that you can rotate between prime and paint.
A good way to see if the valve is set to prime or paint is to try this little test prior to turning the machine on. While turning the valve clockwise a couple times you will notice that the valve handle will separate from the machine in one position (leaving a slight crack between the valve and machine) while the other position the valve is close to the machine. The position in which the valve is separated from the machine is considered the primer position. Do this multiple times to see what I’m talking about. Don’t worry if you keep on spinning the valve, you can spin it a million times in one direction and it won’t hurt it.
Once you figure out which position is prime and which position is spray, place the valve in the prime position and grab the primer hose. Point the primer hose in the empty bucket near the top and at an aprox. 45 degree angle from the side (the reason for this is that there is likely to be pressure still built up in the airless and when you first switch on the airless to prime it, paint will likely burst out of the primer hose and you don’t want to have it go everywhere).
Now turn the airless paint sprayer on and you will see that the airless is sucking up the new paint and pumping out the primer hose. At first you will typically see a cleaning solution come out followed by your paint. When you see your paint coming out switch over the primer valve to the other position and you will see the airless pumping paint into the main hose.
Now that you have primed the airless, make sure that there isn’t a tip in the gun of the airless and bring it over to the empty bucket. Since there is typically cleaning solution in the hose leading to the gun it is a good idea to spray that out until you see thick paint coming out. Once you have thick paint coming out you may put your tip back in. Remember that the tip will have an arrow on one side of the handle that shows which direction it must be in, in order to spray.
When spraying your house, it is a good rule of thumb to spray in the direction of the grain of the material. So if you have siding that runs horizontal, you want to spray in a horizontal style. Also, when you go to spray, the gun should be approximately 12″ from the material that you are spraying.
Do not pull the handle to spray with your hand still. This will spray a lot of paint in one spot causing it to drip. So have your hand moving when you go to depress the handle. This will give you an even look to your paint.
Tip: You can tell when the bucket of paint is getting low when the airless starts pumping really loud and doesn’t stop. Simply tip the nearly empty bucket of paint, at an angle so that the mesh filter is covered and wait for the airless to catch up and stop pumping. Sometimes it’s just easier to just to replace the bucket of paint with the new one and when that starts going down, pour the excess from the old bucket into the new one.
Now that you have the airless paint sprayer and your extension ladders it”s time to paint your home.
I would highly recommend painting the siding of your home first before painting the trim. The reason being is so you can just spray the house as fast as you can without worrying about painting a section of trim that you already painted. So paint the siding and soffit first followed by painting the trim. Painting the siding using an airless paint sprayer should go pretty fast.
After the siding of your home is painted you can now start on painting the trim.
There are a couple different ways you can go about painting the trim of your house. The first way is to mask off all of the trim so that you can merely spray the trim color on to your house, and the second way is to roll the trim by hand.
If you are the only person painting the house I would recommend rolling the trim by hand. The reason being is because it takes a long time to mask off all of the trim on your home compared to just rolling the face of the trim boards. If you have multiple people, it would be faster to have the helpers mask everything off while you start spraying the trim color.
Airless Tip: If you have somebody who can start masking off the trim, have them start on that while you convert the airless to a new color. When changing colors with an airless paint sprayer it is a good idea to have a second bucket filled half way with clean water. Place the intake hose in the clean water gently without getting the old color everywhere in the water.
Take the tip out of the airless and spray all of the old paint out of the hose and back into its original paint bucket. Be careful when doing this that you recognize when the paint starts turning watery. When it does point the gun into the first bucket and spray until it looks pretty clean. It doesn’t need to be perfectly clean. When it looks good, clean off the intake line in the clean bucket and get the old color off the intake line. Now place the intake line inside of your new trim paint.
Remember, you will need to clean the airless in that same fashion before you return the airless back to the rental company.
When all of the spraying is complete, it’s time to remove all masking tape and paper and start touching up your entire home. This step is pretty time consuming because this is the final stage that really makes your home look good. The more time you spend here, the better your home will look.
Congratulations, you repainted your home. Sit back and relax and enjoy the way your new home looks.
How To Paint The Exterior Of Your Home: Step One
How To Paint The Exterior Of Your Home: Step Two
