What You Need to Do Before Painting the Exterior of Your House

Before you start looking for residential painters in Hawthorn for exterior painting, you need to prepare the surface of your house for painting. This is important to ensure you get the best result possible. Failing to prepare the surface of your house will create a less than optimal result. Before hiring house painters in Hawthorn, follow these three simple tips. These are the kind of painting tips house painters use every day to get the best finishes for paint jobs.

Clean the Surface

Cleaning can make or break any paint job, but this is especially the case for the exterior of a house. Cleaning is even more important on the outside of a house than on the inside, as there’s more dirt and grime to get attached to the painting surface outside. A house exterior can accumulate not just dirt and dust, but even moss in certain climates.

An unclean surface won’t allow for an even adherence of paint, so take time to get at your exterior with a sponge and soapy water. Give the surface a scrub to remove grime. Bleach may be needed in places where there’s mould. Many residential painters in Hawthorn and other areas of Melbourne will use a high pressure cleaner to get rid of dirt and other unwanted elements.

Sand & Fill the Surface

Houses that are older may have exterior surfaces that are in bad condition. Sanding and filling the surface is particularly important in this case. If the surface is smooth and doesn’t show peeling or cracking, it might just need to be lightly sanded. This preparation balances out the texture of the wall to allow your brush to glide across it, evenly distributing paint on the wall. A surface with holes or cracks will catch the brush and affect paint flow, meaning some areas will get more paint and some areas will get less, resulting in a sub-par paint job.

If you’re painting the exterior of an old house with lots of holes and cracks, you may need to use body filler. You can pick this up at any home hardware store. Body filler fills up the holes and cracks to create a more even painting surface. You’ll need to sand the wall after applying the body filler to smooth out any rough spots. All good house painters in Hawthorn will fill gaps in wall surfaces before they start painting an exterior wall.  

Prime Before Painting

Priming your wall is best practice for just about every paint job, and it’s especially recommended if you’re choosing to paint with a new colour. All you need to do is choose the right primer for the materials of your house exterior, then start painting that primer on. You might require a couple of primer coats to make sure the old colour doesn’t peek through from underneath. After the primer is thoroughly dry, you’ll then have a surface that’s ready to paint on.