More on Painting a house

Many of the things that professional painters know that I don't I have had to learn the hard way the last 2 months of painting the exterior of my house. The first thing I learned is that the specific color my wife chose they don't have 5 gallon buckets for at Home Depot. This meant that instead I have to pay the single gallon of paint price which is somewhere between 40 and 60 dollars per gallon of paint. The second difficult thing that I learned is that you can't use silicon caulking to caulk your windows (and around some doors) because paint WILL NOT stick to silicon caulking. So, what this means for me is to either sand or scrape off whatever silicon caulking I put on off. Luckily, I only did this on 2 or three windows because my house has 18 windows, including window doors which are French doors that open into the back yard. And likely an equal amount of windows and window doors(doors that are 90% glass) all around the house. But if you don't live in as warm a climate as I do likely you wouldn't have as many windows because of potential heat loss in the winters and/or of heat coming in during the summers and defeating your air conditioners.

So, I found these two things discouraging but with time I can overcome the caulking thing with a little sandpaper and maybe a putty knife for scraping the silicon away or something. Also, it is important (they say) to caulk first before you paint. But that now is the last thing I plan to do and then at the very last in August or September (if I have time then) to paint over my caulking around the windows and door edges.

My plan in June was to start painting my house the color my wife wanted in the least visible place and slowly as I got better to move around the back yard towards the front of the house and then hire someone to paint the front who isn't as messy a painter as I tend to be. I have fun doing it but I have talked to several people that say they wouldn't have attempted it. But since I grew up with my Dad and one of my uncles being Electrical Contractors and since my Dad trained me in the electrical trade from the time I was 12 to 17 in High School summers learning the trade. I have built at least 2 homes completely with my Dad of our own as well as helped in the building of many many houses now. So, even though my specialty is not painting or plumbing I can do it even if I don't really have the patience to become a really good painter. My method is sort of to put a whole lot of paint on at once and then spread it around and hope I see if there are any drips before they form and hopefully they don't form after I have watched a wall for awhile. (I can hear professional painters laughing). But, that's just the way I tend to paint. But it is still better than waiting any longer for my wife to get involved and hire a contractor to get it done. I have been trying to get her to do this for about 5 years. This year I just told her I was going to paint the house, she picked a color and I started painting in about June. So, 1 to 4 hours a day about 5 days a week I have either been painting, prepping or going to the store to buy more paint or equipment. Finishing the front likely will take about 15 more gallons if I want to put 2 coats on the walls. (I have used about 10 gallons so far and some areas have 2 coats and some one so far. But I haven't painted the eves yet which is really a pain. Also, my wife made me promise not to paint up on a ladder because I'm 64 and I sort of agree with her because of all the people I know of over 50 who have wound up in the hospital from falling off of roofs or ladders because of a momentary lapse of realizing enough variables at once. But I find I can maintain the focus for about 10 minutes always even up on the roof. So, I'm still good for any emergency but I know enough not to go up and stay up on a ladder for hours at this age.

Also, I still remember vividly of falling 14 feet through a Tbar ceiling while working as an electrician at age 18 and not being able to breathe a couple of minutes because I fell into a pile of lumber which knocked the breath out of me. Since then I always prefer wood or fiberglass ladders because the aluminum one acted as a spring to throw me across the tbar attic and then through it to the floor through it.