Professional Exterior Painters in Auckland

It is wise to choose a colour that it is lighter than the existing colour. If your house is painted in a dark colour, choosing a lighter colour can increase the costs because it takes more work to cover the dark.  Don’t know the present colour? Find peeling paint, pull it off and take it to a paint store. They can match it. Dedicated paint stores tend to do a better job of this than home improvement stores. Want to change your colour? Then simply make the next colour darker than the present colour.

It’s hard to imagine a house that does not need to be washed down prior to painting. Just run a white t-shirt across the side of your house and witness years, or even decades, worth of accumulated grey soot and dust. Even in the most desperate of painting projects, it’s still recommended to wash down the house.
Washing down your house by hand is the most work-intensive end of the spectrum, but what’s the least you can get by with? If you own a pressure washer (this is the ideal), give it a twice-over on a warm day: once with the cleaning solution and then a rinse with clean water. No pressure washer? Hose it down. Even that’s better than no cleaning. Your two main goals:

• • Knock off the big, visible junk (spiderwebs, wasp’s nests, leaves, etc).
  • Wash away that thin layer of soot and dust.

While the entire house could benefit from a full coat of primer, it’s cheaper to prime only the problem areas, meaning things like raw wood and dried wood filler.
If you just have bare spots (instead of entire bare sections), a litre of primer will be enough. Brush it on and you’re done.
Summary: Hit unpainted and unprimed areas with primer, not the whole house.

Prep-work can equal the amount of time spent painting. Taping and covering will quash the enthusiasm of even the most patient homeowner. Doing a fastidious job on a house with many features can suck up an entire day’s work and more.

Scraping paint isn’t such a time-waster on its own. The problem, though, is that it’s like opening a Pandora’s Box. You scrape that little dollar-sized flake of paint, and it leads to more and more and more.
If the edges of the paint will stay down, leave it alone. The new paint will seal the edges and keep it down. It’s not a perfect seal, but it will hold for a while.

Rolling paint is the best of both worlds. You can cover the expanse quickly, and the paint goes down thick. It doesn’t require an entire day’s commitment. You can spend 45 minutes painting, toss the roller cover and be back at more important tasks, like surfing the Internet, watching TV, or playing with the kids.
The downside is that many types of siding don’t lend themselves to rolling.

Spraying requires a huge amount of preparation. Every single square inch of the non-paintable surface within 2 metres should be covered. But once you get going, spraying is incredibly fast. Besides the prep time, another downside of spraying is that you can only lay down a thin coat.
If this side of the house has grass instead of pavement, so much the better. Spray without laying down a drop cloth. Yes, the grass will get overspray, but the next couple of mowings will eliminate it.

• Buy inexpensive roller covers and toss them at the end of each painting session. Better quality covers are recommended for interior painting, where critical eyes will be viewing the handiwork. Exterior painting is more forgiving.
• For little dabs, smears, and touch-ups, you can get by with foam brushes or cheap nylon brushes. Toss them when you are finished.
• Clean your good brushes with a paintbrush comb and water. Combs cut brush clean-up time at least by half; highly recommended.