Restoring Masonry Surfaces and Painting Wood

Masonry houses present very different renovation problems from those of wood houses. Although in most cases, masonry will not need as much attention as a wood exterior, certain problems are fairly common.

Possible Problems with Exterior Masonry

Tuck-pointing

Tuck-pointing is a skill best learned by doing it. You need mortar, a joint tool, a pointing trowel (which looks a bit like a pancake flipper), and a hawk, which is rectangular and unpointed. If you don’t have a hawk, use a plastering trowel or a concrete finishing trowel.

Some useful masonry tools can be homemade. E.g., take an old screwdriver and bend it into a hook for cleaning out the joints. (Wear protective goggles any time you chip away at mortar.) A joint tool can be made by bending a piece of 1/2-inch copper tubing into a gentle “s.”

With the trowel, tuck mortar from the mason’s hawk Into the joint, then remove excess mortar and pack It In using a joint tool.

Steps in Tuck-Pointing

1. Clean out the old mortar somewhat.

2. In a wheelbarrow, or even on a piece of old plywood (a bucket is less convenient), mix the mortar, using 3 parts sand to 1 part portland cement, plus 10 % builder’s lime. Very gradually add water to obtain a stiff, but not crumbly, mixture. This takes a bit of trial and error, the goal being a mixture that readily packs into the prepared joints.

3. Put mortar on the hawk and hold the hawk just below the joint to be filled.

4. “Tuck” the mortar into the joint with the pointing trowel.

5. “Tool” the joint by rubbing it down to remove excess mortar and then packing down the mortar that remains. This not only gives a nice neat appearance, but it also waterproofs the joint.

Hopefully, you will need to tuck-point only small areas. Don’t go overboard in repointing joints. It’s possible for soft mortar to last forever, so, unless moisture is running into the wall, it's best to leave it alone.

Patch any holes in the stucco of a stuccoed house. Use a hand broom or a sponge to imitate the surface of the original surrounding area.

Areas almost always neglected on masonry houses are wooden window sills and casings. These must be given the same careful attention described below.

Houses with Wood Exteriors

Tithe exterior of your house is all wood, in all likelihood you will have a good bit of work to do. Generally, old houses need to be painted more frequently than new houses, because the wood is more weathered and , even worse, the number of layers of paint maybe mind-boggling. The quality of your paint job, therefore, will depend to a great degree on how well you prepare the surface before painting. That preparation includes scraping, caulking, and priming, in addition to repairing both trim and siding.

Removing Old Paint

To this date, no one has invented an easy way to remove old paint. One of the easiest methods, for a house in really bad condition, is to use a pressure washer, which is a very high- pressure water hose. This equipment can be rented from a tool rental place. Even from the ground, you easily can get about as much off as you can by hand scraping; if you get up close to the work, the pressure will take a lot off.

Under certain circumstances, heat, in the form of a butane torch or a blowtorch, can be used to get off old paint. You will use a great deal of fuel if you use butane. There is a very large stipulation attached to this method: Never, never use fire to strip anything attached to the walls of the house. This includes siding, eaves, window trim, hollow porch posts, and porch roof structure. An updraft through a crack may carry the flame right up the cavity of the wall and you will have a three-alarm fire as quickly as you can say “fire sale.” In addition, don't use heat to remove lead-based paint—and, in all likelihood, your old house will have lead paint.

Electric paint strippers, which burn paint off without a flame, are now available. They work very well and are much safer than using a torch.

The time-honored method is to scrape. You must settle before hand that successful scraping comes only with your willingness to scrape, sweat, and ache. So, keep your paint scrapers sharp and scrape away! Get off all the loose stuff that will come with reasonable effort. You can’t take too much off, as long as your patience doesn’t fail you. Supply yourself with extra blades so you can keep a sharp blade in your scraper without frequent trips to the shop for sharpening, or at least take a good file up on the ladder with you and sharpen the blade as you go. Though scraping paint is a miserable job, often taking more time than the painting itself, don’t neglect it. The longevity of your paint job will be determined largely by the thoroughness of your scraping job.

Caulking and Priming

Caulk all cracks with a good quality latex or silicone caulk. Latex is much easier to handle, but silicone is longer lasting and is especially good in cracks where nothing else will stay. For more routine caulking, use latex caulk. It is half the cost and readily washes off your hands.

As important as scraping is, it's equally critical to prime all bare wood, new or old, with a good quality primer. If you don’t prime the bare wood, the paint will peel in record time! In some cases, there is so much bare wood showing after you have scraped the house that it's best to cover the whole wall with primer, giving special attention to the bare spots. If you are going to paint your house a dark color, consider tinting the primer. This makes it easier to cover the primer with the first coat of paint.

Window Sills

Window sills and other horizontal wood surfaces are often badly deteriorated. Small weather-cracks can be filled with a good-quality caulk or a filler especially formulated for patching rotten sills. Thereafter, carefully maintain with paint. I recommend the very best silicone caulk for this job, but, check the label to see if it can be painted—some can and some can’t.

If the sills are badly deteriorated and rotted, they probably are hopeless, and you will need to whittle them out and replace them. Be sure to use treated lumber for the replacement sills.

The best flashing material for patches is a fairly heavy grade of primed aluminum flashing. It handles well and will take paint so that your patches will be inconspicuous at close range and invisible at 10 or 15 feet. They will last indefinitely.

Siding

Existing siding may need repair in some areas of the house. You can:

• Replace with boards that match the present siding

• Replace with hardboard siding (never use vinyl, aluminum, or cheap-grade wooden siding)

• Cover bad spots with small patches of flashing material nailed on with 3d box nails

Choosing Your Paint

Paint your house with a good-quality paint if you are going to paint it at all. With the great amount of labor involved, you certainly don't want to use a paint that will not stick. On the whole, I feel that a better grade (not necessarily the costly top-of-the-line variety) of any name-brand paint is sufficient. In paint, you get what you pay for. Look for sales or discounts to save money, but know the brand you select. Avoid the cheapest grades because you will just have to put on more coats to get good coverage.

Oil or Latex?

The war goes on about whether oil- or latex-based paints are better. Some—and these generally include professional painters—insist that oil-based paint permeates the surface of the wood better. A lot of the prejudice against latex paint remains from its flaws of some years back. The thing that makes it so desirable is that clean-up is much easier than with oil. When you paint for short periods of time, this makes a great deal of difference. Further more, when working with latex, you can paint when the weather is damp, even in a rainstorm, as long as you are working in a spot where the rain can't wash off the wet paint and the wood you are painting isn’t saturated. Jam convinced that latex paint is basically the paint of the future, with one exception: I often use oil-based primer when covering old, bare wood.

Do not put oil-based paint over latex. Once you start using latex, continue to use it.

Colors

Many old houses respond wonderfully to a widely varied color scheme. Late nineteenth-century houses come alive when all the elaborate decoration for which they are known is highlighted. Three, four, or even five colors aren't unreasonable on some houses, often making an unbelievable difference to a house that was once thought to be quite plain.

Generally, the wise approach is to paint the body of the house a lighter color (usually not white) and the framing boards, windows, shutters, moldings, and decorations darker colors. Here is a place to let your imagination soar. I have seen colors that were, in my mind’s eye, an outrageous combination but, tried on a particular house, they have been very beautiful.

English Tudor-style houses usually look best if painted within a very restricted color range, with the exposed beams a dark color, and the plaster, white, cream, or gray.

If you don’t trust your color sense, ask someone who does. I have seen old houses that were changed as much as day from night, merely by the selection of the right colors. Choose wisely.

Ways to Make the Job Seem Easier

One way of lessening the burden of house painting is to paint your house continuously by doing a side every year or so. Such a maintenance program allows you to spread out the cost of the paint, and perhaps even better, it enables you to face what might, otherwise, seem an insurmountable task. The disadvantage in painting a house this way is that you pretty much have to stick with the same color scheme, unless you don’t mind having different colors on different sides of the house for a time.

If you are compelled by the urgency of your need for paint, or by your own tidy personal preference to paint your house all at once, don’t try to do all of each step before moving on to the next one. E.g.:

1. Scrape for a half a day.

2. Prime what is scraped.

3. Next day, paint the primed work of the preceding day before beginning to scrape again.

In this manner, you will encourage yourself by the bright, clean results of each day’s work and gain the added benefit of not having to move your ladders so many times.

Tips for Painting with a Brush

• Mix paint well, especially oil paint.

• Punch three small holes in the seal rim of your paint can to allow paint to drain into the pail.

• Use as wide a brush as the strength in your arm and hand will permit.

• Keep a 1- or 1 1/4-inch sash brush, free from frayed ends, for painting next to glass or change-of-color lines. Draw the line in a long sweep instead of little daubing motions

• Transfer paint to a bucket larger than your brush is wide by 2 inches. (You will ruin the outer edges of a 4-inch brush catching them on the edge of a standard paint can.)

• Dip only the tip in the paint; keep paint out of the ferrule area of the brush.

• Wipe the loaded brush on the side of the pail so paint will not drip on the ground or run into the ferrule on overhead painting.

• Brush with long sweeping, not poking. motions.

To keep your brushes in good condition and avoid mess, the paint can opening should be at least 2 inches larger than the width of the paint brush; dip only the tip of the brush into the paint.

Spray Painting

Spray painting has a bad reputation, I believe, for several unfortunate reasons:

• People too lazy to brush are too lazy to scrape; how the finish coat is applied is irrelevant if the surface has been inadequately pre pared.

• People looking for a cheap way to get a paint job use cheap paint and don't prime.

• Too thin a coat is applied (although often, sprayed-on paint sticks better in the long run than brushed-on paint because of thinner coats).

Spraying may be particularly suited to special problems you have on your house. These problems might include such things as:

• Shingles

• Louvered shutters

• Rough-sawn wood

• Extensive and intricate decoration

• Large amount of porch balustrades and other gingerbread

Painting with Rollers

Some outside painting, such as the following, can be done with a roller with an extension handle:

• Priming bare spots

• Trim that's hard to reach with a brush

• Porch ceilings

• Porch floors and steps

• Shingled exteriors

Rollers don't give good coverage on the lower lip of clapboards, because your position on the ground requires that you roll up and down rather than side to side. Nevertheless, there might be an otherwise inaccessible area where rolling on paint is just the ticket.

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