Pressure Washing For Exterior Painting

Preparing Your Home for Painting

Generally speaking, the most important part of a paint job isn’t actually the painting itself. Instead, the most important part is actually preparing the surface and ensuring that the exterior is clean and dry prior to putting on a coat of primer. Painting a dirty surface typically provides very poor results. Not only can the dirt and grime show through the paint or cause discoloration, but they also prevent the primer and paint from adhering properly. As a result, your new paint job won’t look as good as it should, and it also typically won’t last for that long or provide a permanent barrier against moisture.

Power Washing Prior to Painting

The easiest way to clean a home’s exterior before painting is to use a pressure washer. With a PSI ranging from 2,000 to 3,500, a power washer provides far more power than your average garden hose and can be used to blast off build-up dirt, grime and debris. Unfortunately, a pressure washer can also cause damage to the exterior of the home if you’re not careful. For this reason, the expert technicians at Paisley Painting take extra care when pressure washing to help prevent etching of wood surfaces or damaging any siding, trim or other exterior features.

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The surface must be entirely free of dirt, oil, chemicals, paint chips and any other substances that could prevent the new paint from adhering. Pressure washing does a great job of removing dirt from the exterior surfaces, and it also helps to make the job of scraping off the old paint easier.

Prior to painting, it is necessary to remove any paint that is chipping, bubbling or flaking off. By pressure washing the exterior, the pros at Paisley Painting can also remove much of the old paint to help simplify the job of preparing to paint. Although some scraping or sanding may still be necessary to fully remove the old paint, pressure washing allows our technicians to speed up the preparation and thus shorten the time the job takes from start to finish.

In addition to being free of dirt and other substances, it is also essential that the surface is fully dry before applying the primer and paint. If you don’t allow the house to fully dry, there is a high chance that the paint will quickly start to bubble as moisture attempts to escape. This is precisely why we also make sure to give the exterior plenty of time to dry out before we move on to the painting. Depending on the temperature and weather conditions, it usually necessary to let the house dry for at least a day or two prior to painting with latex paint. However, we often wait up to a week or more between pressure washing and painting when using oil-based paint.

Once the exterior is fully dried, our expert painters will then finish preparing the surface by filling in any holes, cracks or gaps and then applying a coat of primer to ensure the paint fully adheres. From there, all that is left is to actually paint the home and then stand back and admire the beautiful work. Still, it all begins with pressure washing, which is precisely why we always take the time to ensure the surface is fully clean and prepared prior to painting.