The way you approach painting says volumes about what kind of DIYer you are, as well as how you work. There are those for whom painting the house is a painstaking, anaerobic endurance race that can take years. I’m always reminded of the guy whose job it is to paint the Golden Gate bridge. He starts at one end, paints for a few years until he reaches the other end, and then starts over. Or so the story goes. For other homeowners, painting a house is more of a fast-twitch project that could be done in a day if you didn’t have to move the ladders around or wash the paint brushes out.
Over the years I’d guess I’ve painted about a square mile’s worth of walls, both interior and exterior. Perhaps I’m exaggerating—it may have been more like a square kilometer. They’re both hard to visualize conceptually, although I can tell you that a square kilometer is more likely to contain men in plaid skirts chasing grouse across the moor and a square mile looks more like a giant parking lot with giraffe and elephant signs to use as landmarks for finding your mini-van.
The point is, I’ve done a lot of painting. I’ve used brushes, rollers, HVLP sprayers, even Q-Tips in a pinch. I’ve never liked painting much, to be honest, but it sure beats paying someone a lot of money to do what is, after all, one of the more achievable DIY tasks.
When I was younger, I summed up my approach to painting this way: Slap It On. "Go ahead and paint over the spiders," I’d tell people. "If they get away, good for them."
Over one fall weekend in 2002 I painted our entire two-story Victorian house, top to bottom. It was literally pitch dark Sunday night when I finished. I was exhausted but eminently proud of myself. I painted the house the same way the next year, and the paint-sodden spiders scuttled off the walls to relative safety in large numbers. The year after that I did it again, still relying on my practice of using the dullest putty knife I could find to scrape off the old blistered paint (sharp scrapers remove too much failed paint and this can get time consuming).
Eventually, though, I got the point. Painting the house is not something you should have to do every year. “Slap it On” is a necessary strategy if you have to host a high school graduation party next weekend and the walls of your house look like one of those rustic, Country-style plantstands you pay $300 for at a boutique called “Flea Market Fanciness.” In the end, it probably pays to do a bit more prep work. I still take issue with those DIY writers who insist that “Preparation is 90% of the battle.” Believe me, you won’t find any professional painters who say that. I think maybe half is a good compromise.
The last time I painted our house I slowed down and did a more rigorous job on the prep work. I actually washed the siding and trim with a scrub brush and fake TSP (I’m still not on board with pressure-washing my 120-year old pine shiplap). I used a semi-sharp scraper to remove as much of the failing paint as I could get off without breaking a sweat. I even applied masking tape around the windows (don’t worry about removing it: masking tape comes off by itself after about four years, although it does leave behind a stubborn residue).
Then, I did a very uncharacteristic thing: I applied a coat of primer. Primer actually has several important qualities that differ from paint. Most importantly, it sticks better and it blocks stains better. It makes a lousy topcoat though, unless your goal is to make your house look like the ’70 El Camino your brother-in-law has been restoring since the Carter Administration. You can even have primer tinted so it’s basically the same color as the house paint, which should be water-based and flat. Don’t even think about messing around with oil-base. I brushed only a single kind-of-thick-but-not-too-thick topcoat of good quality stuff (plan on $40 a gallon), always channeling the old Johnny Bench spray paint commercial ”No runs, no drips, no errors.”
It’s been over five years since I painted the house and I can see that it’s time to do it again. As I prepare myself mentally for the job, I’m struck by an interesting metaphor. Painting the house is like driving from Saint Paul to Duluth on a summer weekend. You can zip around frantically from lane to lane, darting in and out of traffic like a waterbug. Gas, brakes, gas, brakes, gotta get there now, now, now. Or, you can lay back, pick a lane and take what the road will give you. Settle into the flow. You’ll hit a straightaway where you can make up ground, and you’ll get stuck behind a giant Winnebago towing a 26-foot boat up a steep hill. But relax. You’ll get there eventually and the trip will have been much safer and much more stress-free. That, in my book, is a better result.
So take what the road will give you. Like me. My daughter’s graduation party isn’t for two months yet, so I have all the time in the world.
