Over this past summer my family painted our backyard utility shed. We saved money and had a great time with this family project.
Supplies needed:
Power washer
water hose
safety glasses/steel toed boots or shoes
pencil and paper
measuring tape
paint
paint scraper/wire brush
paint roller/brushes/edger
paint tray/stir stick
plastic/drop cloth/rags
ladder
flat head screw driver
Calculate:
First we began to calculate the amount of paint that we needed to purchase. We started by measuring the exterior of our building then multiplied the length x width to get the square footage of our building side, we did all the sides and then added the totals together.
1 gallon of paint generally covers a 300-400 square foot area. There may be some differences considering the type of building you have whether it is wood, brick or another type of material.
Preparing the building:
My husband and son started out by power washing the exterior of the building, Making sure they wore safety glasses and steel toed foot wear for protection, they remembered to adjust the sprayer so they didn’t use too much pressure and damage the building material. My husband and son continued to use the power washer until the all sides were done, my daughter and I had to do some tight areas manually with a wire brush and the hand scraper.
After power washing the wood siding, we needed to wait a day or two for the water to dry in the grains so the paint adhered easily and we did not trap water underneath.
Painting:
When we were sure the wood siding was dried thoroughly, we begin to paint.
Making sure we covered the ground areas or sidewalks that we didn’t want to drip paint on. After opening the can with the screwdriver, we made sure to use the stir stick to stir the paint thoroughly, while pouring paint in the paint trays, we made sure not to put too much in the tray to be able to use the ridges to keep the the excess paint off the roller.
Our wood siding has a deep groove about every foot. First my husband and son used the paint rollers to paint the big area of the siding and then my daughter and I used the brushes for painting the grooves and any drips from the roller. It worked out really good that way.
We finished painting our building in one day. We cleaned up the utensils and our mess, the building looked great! Then it was time to clean ourselves up and wait for the pizza delivery!
I suggest your family tackling a job like this, we save lots of valuable money on labor costs by doing it ourselves! We had a lot of fun as a family. It was work, but also a good time for family togetherness and a great learning time for the kids too!