LESLIE: Bruce in Nebraska has a painting question. What can we do for you?
BRUCE: Yeah, I’ve got a little house with that old wood siding on it and it seems like I just had it painted here a couple of years ago and the paint’s really peeling on it. You know, they primed it and everything but – is paint just not like it used to be without the lead in it now? Is it just not going to last?
TOM: (laughing) Used to be so much better when it was chock-of-block full of lead.
LESLIE: When it was toxic.
TOM: That’s right. (chuckling) Well, it’s difficult to paint wood siding because you have a lot of different factors that are playing into that. Usually you get a lot of moisture inside the walls that can come out and it really depends on how they did the repainting. Now, if they truly stripped it down to the original wood and primed it with an oil-based primer and then used …
BRUCE: It was just a water latex primer.
LESLIE: Yeah.
TOM: That might be part of the problem.
LESLIE: You know …
TOM: Yeah, an oil-based primer is so important when you’re dealing with solid wood siding.
LESLIE: There’s also another option. There’s something called a solid stain which has the same properties as a stain, meaning it sort of, you know, penetrates into the wood siding itself so it does a better job of adhering. But if you go with a certain company like the Flood Company, they make one that’s a solid stain that has two products sort of mixed into one. It’s an oil-based primer and a latex topcoat all in the same thing. They’ve put something in it called Emulsibond, which really makes it stick, and it’s as saturated and as heavy tonation in color as a paint would be except you’re getting all of these like extra adhesive qualities because it’s a stain sort of combined into this oil base and latex. And if it’s applied according to manufacturer’s directions, they will give it a warranty of up to 15 years on a wood siding. So it might be something that you want to look into there.
BRUCE: OK. I have to look into. Maybe that’d be the – you’d have to peel all that paint off, wouldn’t you?
LESLIE: The only things you would have to peel off is any areas where you have sort of cracking up around the edges. You would want to get it to where it’s a smooth transition from the peeling paint to the wood surface. You don’t have to strip it down completely because it has that primer built into it.
BRUCE: Oh, OK.
LESLIE: But get rid of any problem areas where you do have chipping or peeling.
BRUCE: Uh-huh. OK. Well, I’ll try that then. Thanks.
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