House Painting

We've had problems with the exterior paint on our house, ever since we moved in. I dutifully scrape off the loose paint, apply a fresh coat of primer, then a new finish coat. But the paint blisters again, usually where the old paint has not been removed, but sometimes even the new paint blisters and peels, within months of being applied. I decided to try a different approach this time. I'm taking off ALL of the old paint, sanding the primer residue down to the wood, then applying an opaque stain instead of primer and acrylic paint. This siding is wonderful old growth Cedar, straight grain. It looks so wonderful that I even considered using a transparent stain but there are patches and spots of putty where somebody made a goober and filled it. So we really need the opaque stain.

Here the old paint has been mostly removed and the siding has been sanded, but you can still see some of it, in its blistered condition.

In this photo the entire wall has been sanded, first with a belt sander using 60 grit, then with a random orbital sander, using 150 grit.

The finished wall looks almost like new. The color is amazingly similar to the original acrylic paint.