5 Tips For Painting Your Stucco Exterior in Arlington, VA
In the painting of the exterior of your home, one of the things that are going to come into play fairly often is the kind of material your home has as its exterior material.
This is so important because of the different techniques that come into play with the various materials, like stucco — which is not at all like the painting of other exterior materials based on the texture of it and along with its ingredients.
Let’s now look at and consider five tips for painting your stucco exterior in Arlington, VA.
1. Do Not Paint Right Away
When the house is newly built or in the case of just an upgrade to the exterior in which you change the exterior from one to a stucco exterior, you should not paint right away.
The thing about stucco is that it requires time to cure, and this is not just in the form of a day or two, but rather a number of weeks.
The importance of waiting to paint newly applied stucco is so great that you risk making for a rather poor paint job if you time it wrong.
2. Make Sure To Use The Right Kind Of Paint
When you’re looking to paint the stucco exterior of your home, you’re going to want to make sure that you don’t use the wrong sort of exterior paint.
Specifically, you actually have to look out for and purchase paint that is meant for painting stucco — you can often find mineral paints that are good for painting stucco.
The kinds of paint that you aren’t going to want to use, on the other hand, are the sorts of paint that are more meant for painting the exterior of a wooden house, for example, or a house that has a sort of siding, metal or otherwise — the paints that are going to work well on these exteriors would not work on a stucco exterior.
3. Check The Weather
The weather in your area is going to have an impact on your paintwork — in a sense, you are going to need to make sure that you have the right kind of weather before you embark on a painting project.
If for example, the weather forecast calls for rain, you’re going to want to avoid painting in that time period because there are few things that are going to wreck an exterior paint job quite like rain.
If on the other hand, you find that it’s going to be extremely hot, you will not want to
4. Sand The Exterior As Needed
In terms of getting your stucco exterior to look as good as possible, you’re likely going to want to sand prior to painting.
There are a number of reasons why this is the case, but one of the best ones is that by making use of a power sander on your stucco exterior, you’ll be able to get rid of anything on the surface that should not be there, including old paint that may not have been properly applied.
When you do take the time to sand your stucco exterior, you should also clean thoroughly afterward and make sure that the exterior is dry prior to starting to paint — you don’t want moisture to get in between you and a good paint job.
5. Allow Time To Pass Before Applying A Second Coat
Speaking of allowing things to dry, you should absolutely ensure that your first coat of paint is fully dry before you add a second coat if you are going to do such a thing.
This is important because if you attempt to paint a second coat and the first coat is not dry, you will find that the paint will lift off of the exterior and come onto your paintbrush, which is certainly not what you want.
Image Painting is a professional full-service residential & commercial painting contractor based in Falls Church, Virginia. We have served the Washington DC metropolitan area since 2003. You can click below to request an estimate.
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