Paint 101

Paint contains:

• Pigments that provide color.
• Resins that keep the pigment suspended and enable the paint to adhere to the surface.
• Carriers are liquids that enable the paint to be spread, and subsequently evaporate once the paint has been spread
• Additives provide the paint with qualities like sheen and scrub-ability.

The content of the paint will determine its characteristics, quality, and are usually related to its price. For instance, a paint with more pigment in it will require fewer coats.

Preparation

There are several steps to ensure that your home's exterior is well-prepared for painting:

• Clean the exterior, usually with a power washing hose and nozzle.
• Remove blistering paint with a putty knife, a sander, a head gun, or with liquid paint strippers.
• Repair damaged siding and trim that is rotting, splitting, or compromised in some other way.
• Mask with tape to protect windows, hinges, and other features from being painted.
• Cover shrubs, flower beds, and other landscape features with tarps to protect from drips and splatters.

Testing

Paint companies provide samples of all the colors of paint they produce on paper "chips" and in brochures. Some paint manufacturers even provide useful online tools to help you explore their colors and test combinations of colors. As helpful as chip samples and online software can be, nothing takes the place of seeing the paints you are considering painted on your home. Often paints on a screen or in a brochure may not look the same as the paints appear on your house. Before you buy ten or twenty gallons of paint for your project, purchase several pints or quarts (the smallest amount you can buy) of colors that you're considering, and apply those colors to your home in an area of at least a couple of square feet. If you are planning to use two or three colors on your home, test all of the colors, putting several colors adjacent to each other, so you can see the affect accent colors have. You may be surprised that the colors you liked in the brochure just don't looked like you anticipated on your home. Testing may seem like a bother, an extra step and added expense. However, once you actually see the paints on your home, you'll realize that testing is a crucial step in picking the best colors for your home.

What's new about paint?

The original oil based paints contained solvents or thinners that released toxic fumes as they evaporated. They posed health risks to painters and occupants, and contributed to air pollution. Modern oil-base paints are made with synthetic resins called alkyds, so they use less thinner and give off fewer toxic vapors than the original oil-base paints. Thinner is an essential component of alkyd paint, but significantly less thinner than there used to be. Latex paint also uses thinner (a maximum of 8 percent), but it uses much less than alkyd paint uses. Because latex paint is less toxic than oil-based and alkyd paints, latex has steadily gained popularity in recent years, and now is the most popular type of house paint. In fact, many cities and towns in the United States have ordinances that restrict or prohibit the use of oil-based and alkyd paints. Recently, some types of latex paints have begun using even less thinner, and some are not using any solvent at all. The latex paints that use no solvents are called '0 VOC' (short for 'zero volatile organic compounds'). O VOC are good for the environment, and good for the health of painters and building occupants, but they can be challenging to work with because they dry very quickly. Recently, a number of companies have begun selling paints, primers, and paint additives that have insulating capabilities.