Painting a House: Tips and Advice?

[JEBB]

A dilute solution of bleach will kill the mildew then rinse it off with a garden hose. I don't think pressure washing is a good idea.

I tried painting my house with a sprayer some years ago. The wind-blown spray coats everything. I agree with the advice above: Hire someone to brush-paint it.

[tuqqer]

I just had my house painted last summer. I hired a long-time friend of mine who has one of the more detail-oriented personalities of anyone I know. He puts a friendly spin on the phrase 'anal retentive.'

He also treats new tech like most of us here look at Macs: he's constantly upgrading and finding the best.

The two biggest surprises I learned from him were:

1. the superior results (protective and looks) that are produced from the new high-end ($2500) super-fine sprayers; it gets into the finest cracks and is easy to apply 2-3 coats.

2. the importance of using the best paint.

That sprayer was just amazing to watch. It went on like a car finish, no exaggeration. He insisted on using only Benjamin Moore's best. Although for the trim, I decided to try and sneak in Home Depot's finest (starts with a B...). But after the fourth can, the stuff separated in his sprayer hopper, and he knew right away what I'd done. That was such a great lesson.

If you're wanting to save money, go to CraigsList and put an ad in there for a top notch independent sprayer painter guy, who is willing to have you work with him. That's how I worked with my friend, and I got a great deal in the end.

[mrbigstuff]

Kids are always exposed to lead in one form or another in these parts (new england); it all depends on how you deal with and define "exposure." There really is no "safe" area for them to be outdoors without some amount of exposure. The way kids get poisoned is from ingestion or breathing dust. You are likely to make little dust if you scrape big chunks of paint but I would second the recommendation to cover everything you can.

People who live in older, urban areas like mine find lead and arsenic in the soil quite commonly and there is no huge rush to move away or to have the kids tested on a monthly basis.

[davester]

Breathing dust is not a common lead exposure route for kids, however ingestion is extremely common and you'd be surprised how many kids get exposed at levels high enough to cause permanent neurological damage. The primary routes of exposure in urban areas tend to be 1) lead paint dust from poor condition window/door trim getting into the flooring materials where it gets on toddlers' fingers which they suck, and 2) lead paint chips and dust in the soil within 5 feet of the house that gets on toddlers' fingers as they play outside...or even worse, they eat the brightly colored paint chips. The lower threshold exposure level for lead poisoning for toddlers is generally between about 150 and 400 parts per million (ppm) lead in soil, depending on state and other factors. It is extremely common to find soil concentrations in the 10s of 1000s within 5 feet of a house that has been carelessly sanded or scraped in the past, compared to 100 ppm or less further out in the yard. I've worked on literally hundreds of homes with lead issues, and believe me, it is utter insanity to carelessly dump all that lead paint into the soil around the house.

[DaviDC.]

How did any of us make it to adulthood with all of the evil lead paint out there?

[davester]

[quote DaviDC.]How did any of us make it to adulthood with all of the evil lead paint out there?
Very simple. Those of us typing intelligent things are the ones that made it. Those of us with lower IQs are the ones who got poisoned. There is quite a large fraction of the population who did not "make it". Childhood lead poisoning generally manifests itself longterm as intelligence deficits, not death or illness. Do you know any dumb people?