Painting the exterior of a house or commercial property is a rather an elaborate job, which should be best left to our professional painting company to conduct with expertise.
There are a lot of aspects involved in the task, and only a trained painter is able to perform the process correctly. If some of these steps are skipped or done wrong it can severely affect the final look and life span of your painting job.
The house painters at Arizona Painting Company are all trained in each of these aspects and we take great pride on each and every painting job to ensure the prep is done right the first time! Every house is a little different so the process may vary slightly depending on what your home needs but here is the typical exterior house painting process when you hire us.
1. Power Washing
The painter power washes to remove any dirt, dust, and debris. This is one of the most important steps, if you don’t start with a clean surface it really doesn’t matter how good of a job your painting company does, it will just peel. We see many companies skipping this simple step or not doing it at all. We spend the time to do it right, a proper power wash will take anywhere from 1 hour to 1 entire day depending on the size of your home.
2. Trenching
We rake back loose rock and soil by foundation so we can paint below grade. This will not affect any termite protection you may have. We don’t “dig” down, we just pull back the loose soil and rocks.
3. Masking
During this step, our team will start by masking off all unpainted surfaces such as your windows, doors or patio flooring–essentially anywhere we do not want paint to be applied.
4. Foundation
We scrape and apply a coat of DRY-LOCK, it’s a type of waterproofing primer that helps keep your foundation from peeling in the future. Since this area of your home sees the most moisture its always the first place to peel. Arizona Painting Company takes the time to DRY-LOCK to keep your house painting job looking great.
5. Scraping
All loose paint is scraped from your stucco, eves, fascia, and wherever else it’s peeling.
6. Drywall Repairs
Patio and or entry ceilings (ones with drywall) are retaped and textured where needed to match your existing texture.
7. Stucco Repairs
All cracks in your stucco are repaired with elastomeric stucco patch, more commonly referred to as “custom patch.” It’s very important that we use this flexible patch as it blends very well with your existing stucco. Some painting companies skip this step and just use caulk, this is a big mistake! If caulking is used on your stucco cracks you will see zebra stripe lines on your completed paint job, this is why we use elastomeric stucco patch instead.
8. Caulking
Our house painters will then caulk around all windows, doors, wood fascia, and any other areas needing caulking. At this time we re-nail all loose trim boards.
9. Priming
All bare surfaces will be primed with the appropriate primer. Primer is like ‘double stick’ tape, it bonds the paint to the surface and prevents future peeling.
10. Painting Stucco
Paint will be applied in two directions, horizontally and vertically for proper coverage. We also recommend for certain stucco finishes that your paint be “backrolled.” Backrolling is when we apply the paint on first with a sprayer and then we follow it with a roller to work the paint into the stucco better, this will give you the longest life on your house painting job.
11. Painting Trim
We typically hand brush your trim with 2 coats to give it the best protection.
12. Painting Doors
Garage and entry doors are sprayed for the smoothest finish and most professional look.
13. Painting Accents or Metal
We typically save the detail work for last, this includes any metal or accents that you want done.
14. Cleanup
We cleanup after ourselves, we take off all the masking from your windows, doors and floors. We cleanup any lose paint chips and we pack up all of our stuff to go with us. You won’t be stuck cleaning up after us like many other house painters in Phoenix.
15. Inspection
The on-site foreman does a full walk-through and inspects the entire job to make sure it matches our quality standards. Once he is done he then will ask you to do a final walk-through to make sure you are pleased with the job prior to us leaving.
Leave This One to the Professionals
As you can see, the exterior house painting process is long and tedious. This is something you shouldn’t try at home, leave it to the professional painting company, leave it to Arizona Painting Company. We’re one of the few painting companies who will take the time to do your job properly, see from our testimonials what other homeowners have said about our workmanship.