Exterior Painting

How a North Texas exterior actually fails

It almost never starts on the brick or the middle of a wall. It starts where water sits and where the sun is hardest.

• Fascia and soffit first. The boards behind the gutter take run-off every storm. When paint there goes, water gets into the wood, and by the time it looks bad the board is often already soft.
• Window sills and trim. Horizontal surfaces hold water. Failing caulk at the joints lets it behind the trim.
• South and west elevations. They get years more ultraviolet exposure than the north side. It is completely normal for one side of a DFW house to look chalky while another still looks fine.
• Bottom edges of siding. Hardboard and older composite siding wick water from the cut bottom edge upward, which is why swelling shows there first.

Which is why we look at the house before quoting a colour. What we find in the trim usually matters more to the price than how many square feet you have.

Different surfaces, different products

• Fiber cement siding. Takes acrylic latex well and holds it for a long time. Caulking at the butt joints and the trim is what determines the lifespan.
• Hardboard and composite siding. Common on DFW homes from the eighties and nineties. It is stable while sealed and swells once water gets in, so cut edges and bottom courses need attention.
• Wood trim, fascia and doors. Priming bare wood before the finish coat is not optional here. Front doors and shutters take a harder enamel because they are handled and they face the sun directly.
• Stucco. Wants a breathable coating and any cracking dealt with before painting, or the cracks come straight back through.
• Metal. Railings, gutters and light fixtures get treated for rust and primed before topcoat.

Painting brick, honestly

Painted brick can look superb and it changes a house more completely than anything else you can do to the outside. Two things you should know before you commit.

First, it is effectively permanent. Removing paint from brick is difficult, expensive and often damages the face of the brick. Treat it as a decision you keep.

Second, the product matters. Brick is porous and needs to release moisture. A mineral-based masonry paint or a limewash lets it do that. Limewash also gives a softer, more varied finish that suits older brick, and it weathers rather than peels. Standard exterior latex on brick seals it, and where moisture cannot escape it pushes the coating off from behind. We will talk you through which suits your brick before you choose a colour.

When a full repaint is not what you need

• Only the trim is failing. This is the most common case on DFW brick homes, and it is a much smaller job. Fascia, trim, garage door and front door will do most of the work on curb appeal for a fraction of a full-body repaint.
• The front door is the problem. A door and its surround, done well in a strong colour, changes the front of a house dramatically for very little.
• The siding is failing, not the paint. If boards are swelling, delaminating or crumbling, paint is not the fix. Replace those sections first, or you are painting a problem.
• It is August and there is no urgency. If the coating is still doing its job, waiting for milder weather gets you a better application. If it is not, we work around the sun and get it done.