Painting exterior of my house

DIY
Published

September 3, 2023

Abstract
When I saw the paint peeling off my house after 10 years, I knew it needed attention. As a DIY enthusiast, I couldn’t resist the challenge of painting 3200 square feet of exterior myself - even though it felt way out of my league. Over two grueling weeks, working early mornings and evenings, I discovered that the biggest obstacles weren’t the paint or prep work, but the logistics of reaching 21-foot heights safely. My solutions included telescoping poles, specialized edgers, and my secret weapon: climbing glasses that flip your view 90 degrees to prevent neck strain. It was excruciating at times, but I pulled it off completely solo. This is my story of tackling the biggest DIY project I’d ever attempted.
Keywords

DIY, painting, home projects

\(\require{cancel}\)

Figure 1: The exterior of my house with the paint peeling off.

The paint on our house was almost 10 years old and it was peeling off at various places. It needed some attention. I am a DIY person and I can do pretty much all of the small repairs at home, ranging from electrical issues to mechanical problems. Painting the entire exterior of the house, which has about a surface area of \(300\, \text{m}^2\) (\(3200\) sq ft), definitely felt out of my league. That certainly didn’t stop me from thinking about it to see if it was doable at all. As you are reading this post, you can predict that I did do it! I am here to tell how I pulled this off and share a few tips and tricks.

First of all, I need to make it clear that I used exactly the same colors as the existing ones. I just put a fresh coat for each color. This is very forgiving; if you miss areas here and there; it is not the end of the world! I wouldn’t even attempt this if I were to change the color.

The most important point in the process is the most obvious one: don’t kill or injure yourself! For safety reasons, I ruled out climbing on a 6 m (20 feet) ladder. I don’t own one, I don’t want to own one. It is very dangerous if you don’t know what you are doing. I needed to climb to the roof of the garage, which is about 3 meters from the ground. But I had very strong ropes securing me at all times. There was zero chance of me falling off.

Not using very tall ladders creates three main problems for the project:

  1. I needed to reach to points as high as 6.5m (21 feet). Fortunately, there are telescoping poles for such purposes.

  2. How do you get close enough to the brown window trims without getting red color on them? Rollers will not work! I was lucky enough to find these edgers with pole adapters. It looked a bit flimsy but it worked so well!

  3. I also predicted that there will be places which are very hard to reach with a roller or the rectangular edger. A brush will do, but it needs an adapter: like this Lock Jaw Tool Holder.

One more thing: I was running this scenario of using a long pole to reach the top parts of the house. This process will take hours at a time. I immediately realized that I would end up with terrible neck pain from constantly looking up! I didn’t quite know what to do about that, until the inspiration hit me in an unexpected place and time. I was sitting in the dentist chair and the hygienist was looking down at my mouth without really looking down. She was using a special pair of glasses that flip the view by 90 degrees, down was horizontal for her! I needed the exact opposite of it: flip the up direction to horizontal! I could easily 3D print some mirror holders and glue them onto a pair of safety glasses. But I was pretty sure that there was a commercial product already. A quick Google search showed that climbers use such glasses! I bought a pair, and I have to tell you that this project wouldn’t have been possible without them!

I worked on this project for two weeks mostly between 6 am to 8 am in the morning, and after 6 pm in the evenings. I spent about 5 hours a day on average. This was a 100% single-person project since I didn’t have anybody else at home at this time. It was excruciating at times. It required a lot of patience and perseverance. This was by far the biggest project I tackled out of my comfort zone, and I think I pulled it off!

Some tips:

  1. Washing the wall with water first, then scrubbing with a brush using a bit of soap and finally pressure washing will ensure paint will adhere well.
  2. Filling up nail holes is a good idea.
  3. Using painter’s tape helps. But you don’t necessarily need it. I couldn’t have used tape for the window trims high up there. The rectangular edger can zero in on the trims and with extra care you can do it without smudging the paint.
  4. Attaching a wet, scrubbing sponge to the pole so that you can switch between painting and cleaning by simply rotating the pole helps a lot. Did you get a bit of paint on the trims? Just flip over to the sponge and clean it up!
  5. Rain is not a show stopper unless it is pouring. If it is gently raining, it won’t ruin your work.
  6. Even if you have the color name and/or the formula in your hand, the paint you will be getting from the shop may not match the existing color. It might be a good idea to purchase a small batch to check the match. They will not accept returns for tinted paint.

And that’s it!