I really need to paint my house. I have a one and a half story colonial with those cement (asbestos) shingles and about about fourteen windows and four doors. I also have a cedar shake garage and a big wooden shed. I’ll have to prime all this plus put two coats of paint on it all. My question to all of you experienced painters out there is do I have to buy a $700 plus airless sprayer to acomplish this without stopping to unclog the cheap Wagoners that I hear so many complaints about. I’ll probablly never paint another thing as long as I live but there is something to be said about keeping my sanity by not using a tool that that I spend more time tinkering and cleaning then actually painting. Oh! I’ve never used a spray gun before. Should be an education.
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I would get a roller and brushes if I were you. Someone should come along shortly and disagree with my opinion, but that seems most practical given the circumstances.
A sprayer may save time, but like 90% of painting is prep, so a sprayer won't save much, especially adding in the learning curve. I have seen major goofups from unintentional overspraying roofs, plants, vehicles, neighbors homes, and even the operator.
Is that garage really cedar SHAKE, or is it shingles? I can't imagine siding a building with something so irregular as split shakes.
On stucco, I would say rollers would be in order - easier to control and no need to mask the windows. On shingles, I would favor the airless spray rig so you can get the edges better.
You can rent that $700 sprayer for about $40 per day.
Practice spraying on the back side of the garage or the shed until you have got the knack of spraying - maintaining even distance from the substrate and constant speed of the spray head so as to deliver paint evenly. Angle the gun upward on one bottom-upward pass to wet the bottom edges of shingles, then two light side-to-side passes - one angled left and the other right, to get the side edges of shingles.
Typical novice errors:
-Moving the gun too slow or too close floods the surface and produces runs. (not immediately, but a few minutes later)
-Moving too fast or too far back results in too thin paint film.
-Swinging the gun in an arc (like a tennis racket) results in too thin paint at the ends of the arc and too thick paint in the middle.
-Too little overlap from pass to pass results in visible stripes. You need to overlap passes about 1/4 to 1/3 to keep a wet edge and even coverage.
-Spraying when wind is blowing, results in overspray on adjacent surfaces, like your neighbors red Ferrari for instance.
Good luck!
BruceT
Definitely rent a sprayer, I can't stress how worth it it is. especially with an uneven surface like shingles, brush painting will be a trying experience. With a sprayer, you'll have to do several thin applications from different angles to get all of it, but it will go quick.
With all the masking and prep you have to do, it will be very nice to finally get to painting and have it all done in a day or two.
I found a friend of a friend who had a sprayer, and was happy to get $50 for 2 or 3 days of me using it. Even if you're paying $50 a day it's worth it.
What you do will depend on how much trim you have and how detailed it is, but I think I masked the window panes, primed everything, painted window and trim, masked window and trim, painted house. Then brushed a little bit of trim that I didn't want to bother with masking.
zak
"so it goes"
We roll, what is known in our area as, transite shingles or cement shingles. On a typical two story house it may take 6 hours, after cutting, to roll each coat. Your house being a story and half it is perfect. Spraying for the first timer is difficult anyway when you add a smooth surface like these shingles runs and dripping could happen in a second.
Now on the garage and shed have at it with a sprayer. It will be lower to the groundand less openings to mask off.
Just don't forget to cover the ferrari with a soft drop cloth first them hermetically seal it with plastic for your protection.
Good luck, Jon
Just my opinion, but I would think you would have to back roll or brush after you sprayed each section anyway, so just go with brush or possibly small roller.
From my experience, I would buy the sprayer for the following reasons:
1.) you can sell it after you're done (just be sure to clean it well as you use it). You can probably get a quality rig for under $700.00, too. Check around.
2.) I would spray the shingles, and then backroll with a roller (of course, a roller!). The time consuming part of any paint job (besides the prep) is continually loading the brush/roller with paint. If nothing else, the sprayer gets the paint on the surface FAST. It doesn't need to be a perfect spray job if you're backrolling.
That sprayer, my friend, you will find to be a real time saver. And I'll bet that you keep that sprayer once you've experienced the joys of using one.
DIA
First off, you should always buy more tools--otherwise they'll jsut go to waste cluttering up shelves at the store.
The Wagners are not bad--they are also not commercial units. They do however, benefit from putting a screen filter on the pickup in the sprayer (and also from having any lumps in the paint strained out).
The nice thing about a wagner-sized unit is that it really will only "do" what you can reach from a ladder anyway. You go get a hplv rig, and all of the sudden renting the pipe scaffolding or boom truck quits looking so unreasonable <sorta, iffin y' squint at it jus' right>
Rolled or sprayed, particuarly on the house, it will be worth your while to have a helper about. Sure, you can single-hand painting, but that can be tough on your joints. It's those little things, like when you find out the people in the next house upwind have no lint trap on their drier and have ahfgans and/or lasa apsos and lots & lots of fuzzy cotton things . . .
i have a rent house with the asbestos tiles, which i have painted at least twice. ten years ago, i used a roller on an extension pole, and it worked great. i got a clamp to hold a brush on the pole to catch the bottom edges of tiles i missed. you can then climb to cut in at perimeter. if you do it this way, consider getting a manual wagner paint stick, which will keep you from having to bend to refill the roller. you'll lose the reach of an extension, but you'll likely get more paint on the wall.
last year, i bought an airless sprayer because i am a tool junky, and i painted the same house again. it went really fast and finished really well, without back rolling. however, you still have essentially the same cutting in, and you have to climb to spray.