This was our first exterior job of the season. We advised to wait till Spring, but the owners were selling and needed to get the house inspected. We got lucky with some sunny days that week, with nights that didn’t go below freezing. We used Sherwin Williams’ Loxon XP which was the only product we were able to use in such weather. Loxon XP can be used as a primer and top coat, excellent product. Passed our scratch test right away!

At first we thought it was lead but it turned out not to be. We still treated it like it was so that we can catch all the flakes and throw it out together instead of having to sweet ot up or blowing it away with a leaf blower. We put plastic all over the floor, taped it to the building to make sure we catch it all. Then we put tarps on top to help contain everything and to stop the plastic from flying away since it was a real windy day,

We used different types of scrapers, 5 in 1’s, wire brushes, We spent quite a while prepping. This was one of those jobs where most of the job is prepping. I think about 80% of the time was spent prepping and cleaning up, So only about 20% of actual painting even though it was all by brush and roller, no spraying involved.

We did have to patch up a lot of the missing brick. We used powder cement and trowels. Real easy, it’s just a bit annoying having to mix more over and over again. You can’t mix big amounts because if you mix too much it will dry up on you and you won’t be able to use it. It becomes waste. So we mix a little at a time, kind of like 20 mimute spackle.

We don’t have the name of this color, it was a color match. I scraped off a big piece of paint and brought it to Sherwin Williams so they can give us a color match. The color match was great, we still did 2 coats everywhere for durability even though they were selling it right away.