need some advice before i get myself in trouble.

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topher5150

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so the wife and I have a pretty old house that's in need of painting, and I'm in need of advice on a couple of things before I start picking away at it and making a weekend project into a year-long project.
I've been noticing that when I scrape around windows, or around the trim on the corners or at the bottom there are some spots where the siding is loose. This tells me from some recent experience that there is some rot behind it. Could I, for the sake of budget, time, and sanity, paint it caulk it, and keep an eye on it
Also, I suffer from the inability to stop picking at stuff like loose paint. As mentioned previously for the sake of budget, time, and sanity how much is too much when scraping old paint?
 
Having owned century old homes for the last 40 years with wood siding and constantly painting something every year there is no one answer to your question.



The modern building materials and practices are without any doubt better. But there is for most of us limits as to how far we can go. In a perfect world my old house would get stripped to the studs insulated, sheathed, wrapped, new windows, Hardy siding, trim and paint. Again but, what I do is like you keep going with painting and replacing siding as needed.



My procedure is to first pressure wash keeping the pressure low enough to not rip the siding off. That will get a lot off and loosen edges that then need hand scraped. I like to get a sharp blade and actually blend the edge where I can. Every piece of wood in your home is in a different state of condition and when you find something too far gone you have to repair or replace it. Around windows where the end grain butts up to the trim is always a poor point. Hard to paint and seal and the end grains are more open to taking in moisture and rot. Most of the time I clean out all the old lose caulking and reapply new painters caulk. Above windows they did all kinds of things as flashing sometimes they have failed and need to be fixed up.



I like a oil paint as a primer and then latex over.



I started doing a total paint job to an old house once and it was taking forever and I was only working on the first floor area. I called out a pro painter and he gave me the best advice on painting a old farm house. He told me he does it for a living and he wouldn’t try painting one by himself. He said it would just wear him down. I hired him and he came in with a crew of about a dozen college age kids and they scraped for 5 days 10 hours a day. The whole job took 2 weeks. It looked beautiful and lasted close to 20 years.

The house I’m in now is 1880s and has clapboard and then in the 50s had glass like asbestos siding put on over it with tar paper between, then about 2000 it had fanfold foam insulation over that and then vinyl siding and aluminum over all the trim. I added a couple doors and some windows and when digging thru it all it looked really good and the vinyl looks like brand new. I hate the stuff but I have to love that all I do is pressure wash it every other year. I put a metal roof on it a couple years ago and that will outlive me as well. :)
 
our house isn't too big, and only really needs two sides scraped, of course, they're the tall sides. I'm not trying to make the house look perfect, just don't want it to look junky 😁
 
Ours the south side always showed the wear first. Weather comes to us from the west and north but the sun on that south side cooked the paint.

I always broke it into sections and worked on one side or one section each summer.

It is 90% prep 10% finishing.
 

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