LESLIE: Carol in Illinois is boosting her curb appeal with a fresh coat of paint but needs some help. What can we do for you?
CAROL: Well, I think I need the procedures of how to go about it. I have a garage with a porch attached to it and the other part of the garage is vinyl siding and the original siding is still on the porch side. And I’ve caulked last year, the area of the sides as well as next to the windows and the door area. But I don’t know as to what the next procedures are to go about – because you mentioned primer to some lady and I thought, “Well, it must be something besides primer; besides doing something else to it.”
TOM: Now what kind of siding is this again, Carol?
CAROL: It’s regular wood siding.
TOM: OK, so it’s regular wood on both the porch and the garage?
CAROL: Yeah.
TOM: OK. Well, the first thing you want to do is to wire-brush the surface to get off anything that’s loose; scrape it, wire-brush it. You want to get off any loose paint because you can’t put new paint over bad paint because it’ll simply delaminate again. And yes, priming is the next place to start after you get all the loose paint off because primer is essentially the glue that makes the paint stick; so no matter what’s underneath this – how old the old paint is, how deteriorated it is – putting a good-quality primer on is going to really stick to that wood surface and then give you a nice, even surface for you to put the topcoat over that. So that’s why the primer step is important, especially with old work like this when maybe the surface is a bit deteriorated.
So we would start with the scraping and the wire-brushing and then we would prime it and then you’d put a topcoat of paint over that.
CAROL: OK. Thank you very much and I appreciate your time on the show. Thank you very, very much.
TOM: (overlapping voices) You’re very welcome. Good luck with that project. Thanks so much for calling us at 1-888-MONEY-PIT.
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