PAINT!

After taking a good look around at the outside of my house, I decided that I was running the risk of portions of my property rotting to the ground if I didn't give them some attention before winter. The first thing was the fence surrounding the back of my property. The back yard/deck/porch/whatever was in terrible shape when I acquired the property. It was full of old furniture, overgrown weeds and vines, and years of neglected yard waste. It's come a long way since then, but I'm not sure now how I was living with such a terribly rundown fence, without it really bothering me. Well, it was looking like it might rot to pieces, so I scraped the old paint off, scrubbed the moss/greenshit/algae off with TSP and bleach and the powerwashed the thing.

Here is a picture of two "cleaned" panels, and one painted. I bought the best paint I could afford and used around 6 gallons of "Ultra White" on this fence alone. Valspar's Duramax paint claims to be extremely durable, painter-primer in one, fade resistant, and mold and mildew resistant.

The difference is very dramatic, and I will still probably do a second coat in the spring.

Then, I noticed that I had several sections of rotted siding in the front and back parts of the house, above the porch roofs. After working on it for a few weeks, this is my diagnosis of the problem:

1. Drainage. My roof gutters are badly in disrepair, and in some parts missing. The runoff from the main roof, splashing onto the porch roofs is causing major moisture on the portions of siding closest to the porch roof. Moisture + wood siding = rotted.

2. Caulk. Do not caulk wood siding. It appears to me, that due to point 1 above, this siding has been "repaired" before. I love to caulk, and it makes sense that if you have a moisture problem, SEAL IT UP! This is not the case for wood siding. The moisture still finds its way into the wood, only now that it's caulked, the wood can't breathe. Also, the wood shifts and expands with the temperature and humidity, causing the caulk to break and stretch, which not only makes it ineffective, it also makes it ridiculously hard to get off after it's all damaged and rotted. Wood needs to breath! DON'T CAULK IT!

3. Neglected painting. Paint is the first shield of defense on the outside of the house, which is why I have invested in fantastic paint, and am taking the time to be very thorough in prepping the surface to get a good job done. My guess is that this house hasn't been painted in 10+ years, with the exception of a few patch-ups with the wrong sheen, over unscraped peeling paint. It just needs to be well cleaned and re-painted every so often. If not, it'll have problems.

So I removed the rotted siding, replaced with custom ordered cedar. (Who knew it was hard to find 4" wood lap siding pieces?) I then painted the bare wood, and then set about prepping and repainting those entire sections of the house, trim and all. Everything was scraped, and received two thick coats of paint. The front of the house is finished and looks fantastic. In the back, I am still racing the cold weather to finish. I am so excited to get the entire house painted next year, as it looks FABULOUS!