Trim and Paint for the LittleHouse

 

Trim and Paint for the LittleHouse

by admin on Mar.24, 2009, under Trim & Paint

The weather had been kind of rainy in the later part of the week we were to depart Mesa, so we put off our trip until Sunday, March 15th.  By the time we arrived at the ranch, the roads were dry, if not smooth.

As we started to set up camp, we tried to hook up the water to the washhouse.  Unfortunately, the level of the main water tank had been drawn down on my last trip to the point where it was lower than the pump in the washhouse.  We tried for several minutes, but could not get the pump to suck up the water into the waterlines of the shed.  So for this trip, we ended up filling the barrel outside the shed, and manually extracting buckets of water as needed.  I need to call Al the Water Man!

Anyway, after setting up camp, our first real work came on Monday morning, when we started cutting the trim pieces to fit the West Gable End, and cover up the ugliness.  It looks better now…

 
West Gable Trim finished

We then proceeded to finish the trim on the front of the LittleHouse, cutting two pieces to span the length of the house, and the remaining pieces to finish the Living Room Window trim.

Then we started applying the primer…
Since the trailer was on the west side still, we started there.  We used the primer that we had brought up last fall, called ZAPP! from Home Depot.

 
Zapp Latex Primer

This worked pretty well, with reasonable coverage.  It was about the same thickness as normal latex paint.  We got about half of our eaves primed with this, at the expense of two very sore arms and one sore neck, from brushing and rolling it on under the eaves and around the rafters.

We ran out of that at about halfway through the job.  We had brought along another can of primer on this trip, just in case.  This was a product called KILZ.  This was some pretty awful stuff, also from Home Depot.  It was oil based, so the solvents were very strong smelling.  In addition it was very thin, and did not cover well at all.  We can NOT recommend this product!

 
Kilz Primer

Here is the West Gable, Primered and ready to paint…

 
West Gable Primed

Then we continued around the North side, priming under the eaves, around the rafters and on the facia…

 
Primered Facia

The priming took the rest of the day on Monday and most of the day on Tuesday.  On Tuesday afternoon, our good friends up the hill, Wayne and Lisa, came down to see how we were doing.  Wayne noticed that we were doing this all by hand, and offered the use of his Wagner Paint Sprayer.  We were skeptical at first, because I had read that the small Wagner Sprayers tended to clog up, and were not worth the trouble.  But Wayne explained that he had used it for their house that they are building up on the mountain, and had no problems.  We accepted his generous offer, and headed into Kingman to pick up some masking materials and an extra gallon of trim paint, as I knew we would use more by spraying.

The next day, we started masking off to limit the overspray…

 
Masking Windows and Roof

Our next post will continue the saga…

4 comments for this entry (from previous blog site):
  1. C R
    October 19th, 2009 on 5:16 am

    I sure hope you did not paint the entire exterior of your house with the Zap primer. If you read the can, it states this is “spot” primer when using in the exterior. The reason for this is because the paint dries harder than some latex (water-based) paints. This could cause the paint to chip when the tempeture changes. The Kilz oil-based is for Interior use only, and should never be used for exterior use. Suggestion for you in the future is to looking at Kilz II or Kilz Premium. Kilz Premium is much better than II, because it contains 50% more TiO2(pigment) so it will do a great job with hiding. This may not affect you in this situation, but you may need it when hiding dark colors. Additionally, Kilz Premium uses the best binder (glue) out there. Because of this, it will stick to just about anything and will seal much better than II or Zap. I noticed you had raw wood on your house. Pine has oils called tannins which are very hard to seal. most latex primers are unable to seal these, but the Kilz Premium is one of the few latex that do. If your trim begins to yellow in some locations, it’s because the tannins are bleading through the paint job. I hope nothing bad happens to your paint job, but just thought I would inform you of the issue you may have in the future.

  2. admin
    October 19th, 2009 on 5:55 am

    Thanks for the info, CR.
    We only did about half of the facia and underside of the roof overhang with the Kilz. I think the can said it was for interior or exterior in big bold letters, but the can’s up at the site right now, so I can’t be certain. We did not use it on the siding, at least.
    Appreciate your comments, and I’ll look closely at the instructions before I use it again.
    Thanks… Randy

  3. buddog
    April 22nd, 2010 on 6:03 pm

    I painted professionally out of Sherwin Williams for 25 years, also worked in the paint dept at Lowes. Also was a petroleum chemist. Truth of the matter is, though they don’t like to tell you this, that any primer can be be used interior or exterior, no matter what it says. Basically it’s because if you cover it with a good exterior paint in a short time, what’s underneath doesn’t have to weather any elements anyway. It only has to hold on. I still like the oil based primers for anything that has bare wood showing. simply because wood has natural oils in it and the oil base penetrates better and gets hold of the wood fibers better than latex. But I will agree with you, Zap is twice the primer as Kilz any day and costs less. Kilz just has a great marketing plan for a terrible product. Amazing how many people used to come into Lowes and think Kilz was the best thing going, until I told them about Zap.

  4. admin
    April 23rd, 2010 on 7:01 am

    Thanks for the post, buddog. So far (after a year), I haven’t had any problems with either primer. The ZAP sure was easier to use, and looked better going on.
    I appreciate your comments. Enjoy the site.
    Randy

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