From: rhaar@albert.cs.gmr.com (Bob Haar)
Newsgroups: misc.consumers.house
Subject: Re: Painting Aluminum Siding
Date: 17 Aug 92 12:25:32 GMT
Reply-To: rhaar@albert.cs.gmr.com
Organization: G.M. Research Labs

In article 23361@philabs.philips.com, dsr@philabs.philips.com (Deborah S. Rech) writes:
|>
|>
|>We have aluminum siding on our house that the previous owners installed about
|>20 years ago.  The western side of the house is now looking very weatherbeaten,
|>plus a sloppy window installer has gotten white caulking on the siding.  
|>
|>We are looking into ways to improve the appearance of the house without 
|>investing lots of money.  Several people have suggested painting the siding.
|>We're reluctant to do this without more data on the benefits and hazards.
|>Does anyone have any experience with this?  What type of prep and paint would
|>be best for the job?  

I repainted the alu. siding on our house about five years ago. It was
a good bit of work, but I am quite satistifed with the results. The
oriignal color was white, but I painted with a medium gray and left the
wood trim white. IMHO, it looks quite nice. The paint has held up
well everywhere, except on my steel garage door, and that is rusting
from inside.

Note that this is for the kind of aluminum siding with the "baked enamel"
finish. You might have different results with vinyl coated siding, but
siding 20 years old is likely to be enamel.

I used Sears Best acrylic latex exterior paint, which says on the can
it can be used for aluminum siding. I first asked some professional
painters and paint suppliers. They all said that there was no problem
painting the siding. Several of the painters said that it should be 
done with a special aluminum siding paint that only they could get. Other
painters and all the paint stores said that any good quality latex exterior
paint would work and that preparation is the critical.

I think this is especially true in this situation. You must do a thorough
job of preparation to get decent results. 

I first scraped all peeling paint from the wood trim, I then replaced
all the caulking (most of it was cracking) with a paintable 25-year
silicon caulk. Then, I primed the wood and caulk.

Clearing off the old weathered "chalk" is essential. I used a solution
of TSP in hot water, and hand scrubbed the siding with a stiff bristle
scrub brush - the kind sold for scrubbing concrete floors. This was
tough to do thiry feet up a ladder, but was worth it. After I finished
scrubbibg each section, I rinsed it with plenty of clean water before
it could dry.

When that was all done, I masked the windows and sprayed on the paint
using a Wagner airless spray outfit. This worked OK, but I think that
I would just brsuh it on next time. I had to spread out the spraying
over the course of several days and spent so much time cleaning the
spray outfit that I think brush application would have been just about
as fast.

After this dried for about ten days, I went back and painted the wood trim.


---
	Robert Haar               InterNet : rhaar@gmr.com 
	Computer Science Dept., G.M. Research Laboratories
DISCLAIMER: Unless indicated otherwise, everything in this note is
personal opinion, not an official statement of General Motors Corp.


Newsgroups: misc.consumers.house