External walls 5: Paint

Ideally the render should be left to dry for several months, however with the scaffolding deadline approaching fast we had to apply three coats of paint onto every wall in a matter of days. Luckily a spell of warm weather had helped dry the render enough for us to begin painting.

We started on the west side of the house.

The paint can show up any imperfections in the render so we were pleased to see the walls looking so flat and smooth. Damo(lition's) methods may have been chaotic but the results were surprisingly good.





The top part of the wall with its first coat.





A few hours later, the west side is complete. Only two more coats to go (groan).







Notice that the south wall has yet to be rendered in this picture. With such limited time we had to start painting as soon as the render was dry enough. While Damo was rendering one side of the house, we were often painting the other.

Rendering is a messy business. The porch roof took a real battering. Thank goodness we decided not to have it tiled until after the render and painting was completed.

The unsettled weather meant we had even less time to paint as several days were rained off. We often had to paint into the late evening until the light faded around 10pm.

We painted the first coat on the front (north side) of the house at sunset.

After a couple of late night painting sessions we'd completed the front.

Ominous grey clouds. The unsettled weather continued to play havoc with our painting schedule. You wouldn't think it was the end of May!

Two sides down, two sides to go...





Painting the south side was constantly interrupted by rain showers.

The white spots of paint are stain block. The sand used to make up the render often contains iron ore deposits which can cause brown rust stains to emerge after it rains. We painted the stain block over as many as we could find.





We had to put in some marathon painting sessions in order to get the south and huge east side done, working from early in the morning until late at night for several days. It was not much fun, especially as it was my birthday and the farmers were spreading slurry (stinky cow poop and chemicals) on the fields around us. Grrrrrrrr and double grrrrrrrrr!

Finally the painting is complete.





The day before the scaffolding was to be collected we sorted out all the final details. We cleaned the windows, finally removed the protective tape that had been on the window frames for months and started applying silicone neatly around the windows.

Alan applying silicone to the window edges.

He used masking tape to achieve a straight edge.

The end result gives a nice, clean edge.