Prep Nearly 200 Years in the Making
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| Decades of additions and remodeling were pulled together with a consistent and well-prepped
paint-prep scheme. |
This project proved a perfect example of how regular maintenance can keep a home looking pristine for generations. The home was erected in the 1840s and underwent countless changes over the years: Additions were built; the interior and exterior were dramatically altered; and in the 1990s the homeowners began a 20-plus year renovation that entirely transformed the home. The final touch for this remodel was a full exterior repaint.
Unfortunately, previous painters had skipped a lot of important steps—such as the entire prep process. Maine is an unforgiving state when it comes to the elements and a lot of the metalwork was beginning to display surface rust. Many of the clapboards and corner boards on the garage and home needed to be replaced; rusting fastener heads and unprimed knots were bleeding through the coatings; old glazing had failed; and remnants of leadbased paint had to be dealt with in compliance with EPA’s Lead Renovation, Repair and Painting Rule.
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| The handcrafted historic front door was carefully prepped and painted to tie together the dark color of the roof and the cheery new exterior. |
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As might be imagined, the prep work was extensive. First, all failed coatings were removed. Next, the crew spot-primed raw wood with a slow-drying alkyd primer that gave the primer the opportunity to penetrate the substrate. In addition, windows were reglazed, rust was removed from the metal fixtures and primed with a rust-inhibitor, bleeding knots were treated with a shellac-based primer, and every clapboard and piece of trim was caulked. In addition, the team gave some extra care to the historic handcrafted front door. To tie everything together, all doors and metalwork—from railings to bulkhead, oil drum filler pipes and more—were matched to the color of the metal roof.
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| Painters treated rusted metal and peeling paint. |
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Key Products
- Rust-Oleum rust-inhibiting primer
- Zinsser B-I-N
- Benjamin Moore Fresh Start alkyd primer
- Benjamin Moore MoorGlo low lustre paint
- Sherwin-Williams Duration satin paint
- Sherwin-Williams SWP exterior oil-based paint
