Mesa, AZ www.brassberryspainting.com 480-892-0463

Down on the Farm, Sort Of

With a fresh coat of paint, after many challenges.

Just because it’s a smaller project doesn’t mean it’s easy – this entry from Brassberrys Painting & Coating shows some problem-solving savvy on a smaller stucco home. The company was contracted for a total exterior repaint, which, along with the stucco, included wood overhang and fascia, gutters, doors, basement wells, well grates, ladders, wrought iron and security door, and a bit of fixing up after that famous “painter who came before.”

The first challenge was just getting to the substrate. The house is in a community called Agritopia in Gilbert, Arizona. It sits on a working farm; lot lines are 5 to 7 feet, and all areas over 10 feet high required gaining access by using an extension ladder on a neighbor’s property.

Company president Carole Anderson rang out several challenges they encountered on starting the project – it wasn’t going to be an easy exterior after all. After power washing, the stucco was very chalky on sun-exposed sides. Meanwhile, someone had painted the basement wells with cheap construction flat that strutted its stuff with some through-andthrough scale and lots of surface rust. Things got worse from there. “Plywood on the overhang had wicking stains from roof underlayment failure and there were stress cracks at windows,” said Anderson. “We also encountered stucco failure at grade on the stem wall and total coating failure on the front porch.”

So painting? That’s the easy part.

After a bit of “what are we getting ourselves into,” they came up with a solution for each problem. “We patched and primed stem wall to basement [with a] waterproofing system,” she said. “We primed suspect stucco, then v-grooved and caulked all major cracks.” After that, they scraped the fascia and all plywood overhang, and primed it to prepare it for two coats of paint. Next step: wire-wheel and hand-sand the five basement wells, grates and ladders, then prime them with rust inhibitor and/or rust converter. Yet one more step – power wash the front porch with an aggressive solvent and TSP, then rinse, prime and paint.

The house before the project.   At work together on the garage. Metal railings took a lot of prep.

Key Products

• Zinsser Bullseye 1-2-3
• Rust-Oleum Concrete Primer
• Rust-Oleum Porch and Floor Coating
• Rust-Oleum Rust Converter Seal-Krete
• GE Elastomeric caulking
• Dunn-Edwards Evershield
• Dunn-Edwards Aristoshield