Power Roller Or Power Roller With Trim Pad For Exterior Painting?
Has anyone tried painting the exterior of a house with either a Power Roller or a Power Roller using the trim pad attachment? I need to paint the exterior of a house soon. I have an airless sprayer but I don't like the quality on exteriors. I want something that gives a thick coat and fills in the imperfections in the surface. I thought about using my Power roller with the roller or trim pad but I thought I would see if someone else has attempted this yet.
What are the exterior surfaces... stucco, wood siding? Are you trying to paint with out doing the needed prep work? Painting is 90 percent prep and ten percent paint. Do you have the right spray gun and tips? Time wise I can blow you away with an airless in one hand and a roller or brush in the other. Many types of paint and latex stains require back rolling. How much painting have you done? Unless you rent a pro quality power roller or spend big bucks on a pro quiality set-up, you are probably going to make a big mess with some Home Depot "homeowner" Wagner power roller. Just to clean the thing up will be a waste of time IMO.
I have a power roller and would never use it again. A sprayer is so very well worth the money!!! I painted an entire interior of a 2000SF house in a day with the power roller and it was great for that but it is not something for small jobs or when you only want to work for a few hours. It requires extensive cleaning (30-60min!) when you are finished.
Spraying is definatly the way to go. Why do you not like the quality of spraying??? You can spray it on as thin or thick as you like...
I'm not a painter. In fact I HATE painting! Its too damn expensive to hire out though. I'm curious on your experiences. GOOD LUCK
The exterior surfaces that I will be painting vary. One house is wood siding, another is really old aluminum that is starting to look bad even when you clean it. Spraying may be fine for new construction or interior work but I have not liked the results on the exterior. With wood siding, it is great to be able to load a brush up and fill in all of the small cracks that form in the wood and former paint. With airless, if you try to fill cracks it runs off all of the surrounding surfaces. I'm far from a pro at painting, but I did spray pipelines and buildings for a year back in the dark ages when I was first out of high school.
There was something else that I have noticed about spraying that I don't like. Most surfaces on the exterior will have places that have to be scraped or the paint has peeled off. If look around the edges of one of these scraped off areas after you spray them you will notice that the paint does not fill in all around the edges of the scraped off area. This looks like an excellent area for water to get behind the paint. Maybe this is where backrolling would come in handy, I don't know. The houses I have seen sprayed appeared to have just been sprayed and nothing else. I have heard other people mention that when they have had the exterior of a house spray painted the paint job only lasts about half as long as a house they have had painted with a brush although I don't know how factual this is.[ Edited by davmille on Date 02/21/2004 ]
when you painted with the airless did you thin the paint or run it straight out of the bucket? I have never painted outside with an airless but I would think it should do as good a job outside as in.
I always use my paint straight out of the can. I'm not even very impressed with the results from spraying inside either to tell you the truth. I have one apartment that was sprayed immediately before I bought the property. This again is an older building so the walls are not perfectly smooth and there were areas that the paint had been chipped off . From a distance the paint job looked ok, but you could still take you finger nail and peel off more paint around the edges of one of these scraped off areas after they had been sprayed. You wouldn't be able to do that if it had been rolled or brushed. This is more critical on the outside where water can get under the paint With all the power rollers out there I thought surely somone has tried this. It seems like you could power roll an area that was maybe 6x6 ft and then go over it quickly with a brush to hit the areas that the roller couldn't get. I haven't even tried the trim pad before, but maybe that would work well by itself.
It sounds like most of the problems you mention have to do with the level of prep, not the method of application. You can't simply scrap the loose paint and expect to get a good looking finish. If the paint adhesion is marginal then the new paint will lift off the existing coating. You have to get ALL the old paint off that is going to come off to do a really professional job. Scraping AND sanding to smooth the edges of the old will show which areas need more attention. As said earlier in this post, it's 90% prep and 10% painting!
we have had trouble using a cheaper paint also, dad painted one of his rentals with the cheapest paint he could find at the hardware store and it did not come out nearly as well as mine did but I used Sherwin Williams mid grade paint, if I remember right it was around $100 per 5 gallons.
Well, I do appreciate your feedback, but since I hadn't heard from anyone yet who has tried a Power Roller on the exterior of a house so I did a search. I did find the first comment listed below on the rec.working group and the second on the www.misc.consumers.house group. I'm not brave enough to try spraying outdoors with other houses and cars nearby but it seems to verify what I have seen and heard about the quality of exterior spray jobs. It's not much to go on but I guess I'll give it a try. I'll let you know how it works for me although it may be awhile since the weather isn't great right now.
Yep, I painted the entire exterior of my house with a Wagner Power
Roller, I got the AC powered one (it was about $112 or so). Sucked the
paint directly out of a 5 gallon drum - it was fast and clean - I highly
recommend it. I didn't like the look of the cordless ones - who wants to
tote the paint and unit around on your back?
Ken
Also, on a house with a "porous" surface such as cedar, I would
rather use a method of painting that actually touches the surface, since I have
seen a number of exterior paint failures from sprayed on latex.
Just my two cents,
JK
In the larger jobs we always use an airless. We do of course change the tips and the liguidity of the paint. Also, we do multiple coating. First one loaded with sealer and the second one adjusted with tip and mix to properly load the surface. Yes we drive the paint up between the wood sidings.
My wife the artistic one, while playing with the 550 to 650sq ft, artists retreats in the hills will utilize other forms. She also finds herself doing multiple coats. When we first met I had a problem getting her to paint with other then a brush. Power rolling she utilized on one job but the tiny house with the funny angles did not lay out for this type of equipment. She returned back to hand rolling with three different types of rollers. We came in afterwards and taped it up for the accent trim lines.
I find that any residence built prior to 1905 should be treated differently, we do intense prep and fill and smoothing. My god I sometimes think I should be working on a car fender with bondex. Just to re-establish surface integrity is a problem. They are fun. When we are lucky enough to buy them we keep the exterior truly representative, and then go wild on the interiors, open them up, spin a new slightly curving wood stairway up almost free standing. Very dramatic and most of the people who there reside start to mix things. Like an old Dutch Desk from 1670 in one corner and an Ames Chair and Ottoman in the other,
A Japanese type paper lantern suspended from the ceiling two stories up. A Knoll tulipy table under it with 4 chairs. Etc. etc. lots of fun.
Lucius