Use Paint Rollers on House, Save Brushes for Small Areas
Painting your house with a brush is a lot like mowing your lawn with trimming shears. Sure, you’re well-equipped for touchups and for working in tight spots. But the field work goes on forever. Solution? Paint the outside of your house the same way you paint the inside. Save the brush for the tricky spots, and paint the main body of your house with a roller. It can hold a lot more paint than a brush, and it can put it on a whole lot faster and neater.
What you’ll need:
Obviously, a roller. Get a good, heavy duty 9-inch roller with a handle that can take an extension of some kind. The most convenient type is the telescoping aluminum handle, but you can also get by with a couple of screw-in extensions made from replacement broom handles. Leave one full length for a long reach; cut the other one in half for normal work.
The roller cover. Get a high-quality synthetic type. For ordinary lap siding, a 1/2-inch or 3/4-inch nap is about right. For shingles or grooved plywood siding, a slightly longer nap will help work paint into the more highly textured surface. Try a 1-inch or 1 1/4-inch length. This same cover will work well on concrete block and parget foundations.
For deeply textured stucco or split shakes, you might have to go all the way to 1 3/4 inches. But as a general rule, use the shortest nap that will get the job done. The longer the nap, the rougher the paint job will be.
A five-gallon bucket and a roller grid. An ordinary roller tray like the kind you’d use indoors just won’t make the grade outside. Most good paint stores will sell the grids and buckets, and with this rig, you can take about two gallons of paint up a ladder without fear of spilling.
A brush, to cover those areas you can’t hit with the roller. A 3-inch or 4-inch, synthetic-bristle brush is about right.
Ladders. Since the roller works so fast, it pays to set yourself up with a good ladder system that can keep pace. Otherwise, you’ll spend most of your time climbing ladders and moving them from place to place.
Two good extension ladders plus a pair of ladder jacks will really help you move along. Rent them if you have to. Stand the ladders against the house about 10 feet apart and run heavy planks between them, supported by the ladder jacks. This will give you a sturdy platform that will let you cover 100 square feet or more with one climb of the ladder.
The new metal ladders that fold into all sorts of odd shapes also help you cover a lot of siding, especially on one-level houses. You can set them up in an ”M” configuration and run a plank across the top to cover a wide area of your house.
Putting on the paint:
Always work in the shade, preferably on a cool day. This slows down drying time so you can blend your brush work and roller work together smoothly.
Start with your brush. Cut in around doors and windows. Hit any inside corners you can’t reach with a roller.
Then, go back with the roller and cover the field of your work. If your roller won’t work, won’t paint up under the butts of shakes, shingles or lap siding, you’ll have to touch these areas up with the brush. But generally, if the roller nap is long enough, you can press it up firmly under these butt areas and get the paint where you want it. The short extension handle lets you work two-handed and create the extra pressure you need for this kind of work, without getting cramps in your hands.
Next time you have to paint your house, give a roller a try. I think you’ll like the result.
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Tags: house paint, paint, paint brushes, paint rollers, Painting