Video: The Importance of Paint Preparation

MOUNTAIN VIEW — Host, Sarah Rutan: One of the keys to a long-lasting exterior paint job is proper surface preparation. To learn more, we’re in Mountain View with Frank Hampton of Stanford Painting, speaking on behalf of Diamond Certified Expert Contributor Jay Furlong.

Frank Hampton: Here we are in Palo Alto California at Gamble Gardens. We painted this house about thirty years ago and we’re doing it a rest-we’re just lucky enough to do it again. We want to show you the proper ways to prep your house. First what we do we treated the mildew areas, we power wash the entire structure, we go through and as you see we hand-scrape the paint off, we power sand it, we smooth it down, and the next step is going to be priming and painting.

It’s important to prime all exposed areas just because if you don’t prime it and you put paint directly on the surface, it’s just going to peel off and you’re going to have to paint it again in two years. So it’s really important to put a good primer on the raw, exposed surfaces: raw metal, raw wood. Because what it does, it creates a whole new surface to put any kind of paint you want on.

If you do it properly – you put one coat of primer on, two coats of finish – a good quality paint job should last anywhere from eight to 12 years. Ours have been lasting 15, easily.

Host, Sarah Rutan: To learn more from local, top rated companies, visit our Diamond Certified Expert Reports at experts.diamondcertified.org.