Essence of Home Improvement

Posts Tagged ‘Paints’

The exterior painting for residential homes is more than just painting the home itself. It is about painting all the little details like the shutters, house numbers, outdoor furniture, mailboxes, planters, light fixtures and the porches. The most important part of painting these items is proper preparation before painting.

The same kind of preparations you use for painting the exterior of your home should be used when you paint the other parts of your exterior decor. Drop cloths should be use in the areas where you are painting to protect things that you do not want painted or damaged. Any surface that you plan to paint should be free of cracks, holes, nail heads that may be exposed and the surface should be smooth and free of dirt. Any nails that protrude can be countersunk and the hole filled with wood putty. If there are places where there is old caulk this needs to be removed and new applied. Any really shiny or glossy places can be sanded lightly with fine sandpaper so the paint will adhere easier. New siding will have some mill glaze that needs to be sanded away so the paint will adhere properly.

Most paints are mixtures of three main ingredients – a pigment, a binder and a liquid. The colour and opacity of paint are due to the presence of a pigment. This can also impart considerable protection to the other ingredients by harmlessly absorbing otherwise destructive ultra-violet light. The simplest paint is whitewash which once applied is merely a coating of pigment in this case chalk. Whitewash does not offer much protection to the surface beneath it because it does not generally contain a binder (sometimes called a film former or resin). A binder holds the pigment together and sticks it to the surface. Binders are normally solids, so to produce a paint which can be spread over an uneven surface the binder is usually broken up into small pieces and suspended in a liquid.

Paints by use.

An ideal ‘all purpose’ paint should satisfy a number of criteria – it should stick strongly to the surface it is applied to, it should cover well, it should leave a decorative and desirable finish, and should last, particularly when used outside. No one paint performs all these functions well; as a result, paints are formulated for specific uses. For example, when painting woodwork, a three-coat system is usually needed consisting of a primer (to stick to the surface beneath), an undercoat to cover well) and a top-coat (to give a pleasing, durable finish).