Painting & Repainting Soffits And Fascia

Hello again out there, your local Cheap Calgary Painter here with this painting soffit and fascia blog post here on our low cost Cheap Calgary Painting internet website. We've put together this painting soffit and fascia blog post on day number three of us painters out here painting this house. And I'm going to talk about what I'm doing today.

On day number one we did the full and complete pressure washing of the house exterior and left it for the rest of the day and over night to dry out. On day number two we got busy prepping the house and getting it ready for a new higher quality exterior painting finish. This house alone, it's a very large house, probably around 3,500 square feet two-story. 

We've got 2 dormers on both sides that you can't access by just walking on the roof, so we got some challenges there that we're working on since day number one, but this job to tackle it by myself one of the things you do always want to do is you just think about layer. And your layering your job or sequencing the job properly for a one-man crew or two-man crew. 

And what I did first day I just got here again. I wanted to tackle something simple and I wanted a tackle something I didn't have to do a lot of prep and masking with. And that was the accent color, so those gables were very simple, easy to do very first. And you got to spray your gables that accent color so you can mask and do the soffits which are a different color. 

So I tackled the the gables first. I tackled the garage doors and then on the side man door day two I wanted to do some masking and in spraying of the body. So I did masked all the windows off and I sprayed all the body on on the lower body and then the big Gables on the sides. I got all that done. Now we're day three. 

I'm working on the hard stuff. And I didn't want to tackle the hard stuff day one. You all wanted to just get myself into it so I've got the first dormer up there. Some tools that you're gonna need when painting the house that's gonna make the job faster and more efficient for you and just a more pleasant process. 

If you've got any type of gutters on your house you need to protect them. I'm using a ladder helper, a pivot ladder gutter guard right here. This thing just stick it up in your gutters you can lean your ladders on on your gutters they're not going bend. And you're not gonna scratch them. If you're doing any type of spraying you need to have a cardboard shield holder. 

This is a craft cardboard shield holder. This is a must-have tool to help you control overspray. So I want to tell you a little trick here. I got all my ladder here, have got some ladder boots on it, and the ladder boots make it so you know you'll mark up your house or scratch their house freshly painted surface. But the ladder boots still will actually leave marks and they'll stick to the paint if you've painted the same day. 

If it's had time to cure out it won't stick to the paint, but what I do is take and put plastic over my boots and the plastic won't stick or mark up your painted surface. And you don't want to put the print side up because the print will actually transfer to a freshly painted surface. So I just take flip it upside down. Now I'm gonna just wrap this plastic around my boots, and now my boots will not mark up my surface.

So it doesn't have to be anything pretty I'm just gonna put it on here, fold it over on the top like this. So now you got a nice clean plastic surface that can lean up against your house and not mark it. So I just want to say something about you know what I'm doing right here. So we've got to our gable the accent color right here, and then the soffits themselves, they were previously painted the same color as the shakes, but I really like it if the shakes are a different color. 

The accent color is separated from the soffit. The soffit what I'm doing is I'm doing it the body color. A lot of times we will mask this off, and put a nine-inch paper right here. Mask it and we'll just spray it. But I'm working by myself. I'm up here. If I had to mask, and then go down, come back up, it's multiple trips. 

I can do this just as fast rolling it these edges instead of masking it. And then I'll spray. Sometimes I'll spray the rest of it, or I could just roll the entire thing. You can see it's fairly fast rolling this, and it just you do this, do these soffits, it's a different color, same colors the body, it looks a lot nicer. Just an added touch.

It definitely takes a lot more work than what the previous painters did, but the final product looks a lot nicer. We're always after a good-looking end product, that's the goal. Let's see some light spots on the shakes up here, and we've got a touch up too. Okay I got another tip for you, and it's wearing gloves. I always talk about wearing gloves and PPE. And I wear gloves for a lot of reasons. 

But when you're working with extension ladders all day long, these climbing ropes that are attached to these extension ladders, ratcheting them up and down, you can get burns on your hands. That's never gonna be an issue, and you can grip the rope a lot in there. So the rope is gonna be sliding in my hand as it's going up and down and it doesn't actually burn or hurt my hand at all having gloves on. 

So if you're painting an exterior, it's definitely a good idea to wear gloves. The guns, spray guns sitting out in the sun, get hot very easy. So that's you know, you're not gonna burn your hands when you're grabbing the gun. You know with gloves on also, it helps grip the gun. But there's just a lot of other reasons at the end of the day. 

You're not gonna have as dirty of hands. You know wearing gloves too, and I don't like to have to sit there and just scrub all this paint and grime and stuff off my hands at the end of the day. All right so I'm here doing the soffits above the accent color of the shake color. So I'm just hand doing them rolling them because it's probably about the same amount of time if I'm working alone. 

So instead of masking it I just want to get up the ladder one time. So I'm rolling them. Just using a four inch roller. I'm using a premier woven pro 3/8 inch roller to roll the large parts. I'm also using a premier riverdale China X bristle brush. This is a 3 inch angled sash brush, and the China X for exterior paints, the best to use on the outside because they clean up quickly at the end of the day. 

Paint does not stick to a china expresso brush, and they're gonna be outside, and you're gonna be using your brush. It's hot, it's gonna get dry paint on it. It's really hard to keep them from getting dry paint on them, so those are the tools. 

I'm doing the soffit. I'm just using a 2 inch cutting bucket. I like the two gallon cutting bucket with a 1 gallon buckets screen on it. I think I'm almost halfway done with these gables here, like I'm working on this ladder. I always keep one hand holding on to the ladder and my bucket at the same time the way I know my bucket secure and know I'm secure because I'm holding on to the ladder. 

Some people like using bucket or pale hooks, but I'm not one for pale hooks because I don't have the bucket in my hand, and I don't have control of it. So I kind of like to just myself have the bucket you know in my grasp, and the ladder in my grasp. So just makes me feel safe and secure. There's somebody that's kind of afraid of heights makes me feel more comfortable doing it like that. 

Another two I want to talk about that I'm using today is the pivot roof boot. And I've got 2 dormers up here. There's the pitch of the roof you can't walk on, it's so steep. These things you can screw them into your roof underneath a shingle, and then you can slide a extension ladder down in it. You can use other devices like the pivot ladder box in conjunction with these things, but it makes accessing the roof safe.

And so these things are a must-have if you've got to get on a steep roof. So you'll probably see me using these things on the 2 dormers up there. A couple other things you just want to share when I'm out I'm painting. Before I start painting I use a product called workmans barrier. Workmen's friend barrier. 

And this stuff just makes it at the end of the day, it makes it easier for me to clean up my hands. It actually puts a barrier on your hands that paint and stuff like that doesn't stick to. So I usually put it on several times a day, and I like soft hands, do so. There you're going to Drai's non-greasy, dries in just a few minutes, and then you're off and running. 

Also in the sun, another thing. I always, before I start a day, use sunblock. You're gonna be outside all day long, and there's nothing worse than getting absolutely fried the back of your neck. This is a product that I've been using, Skinny's sun gel. So it works really good. A little bit goes a long way.

So I just want to give you a little advice on ladders and setting your feet on ladders too. So we got two, um an extension ladder. I've got self leveling feet on his ladder, and absolutely essential when it comes to doing the exterior repaint, because you want to have your ladder sitting level and on level ground. Easier said then done in some of those poor access locations out there. Painters know what I'm talking about.

But you also want to have your feet set properly. Whenever you're in grass you're supposed to have your spikes down in the grass, so the ladders not sitting with the rubber down. That's how you want your ladder sitting on concrete. You would never want that sitting like that on grass, because the likelihood of the ladder sliding is extremely great. 

The ladder is very safe with the spikes down in dirt. So you'll take the ladder itself, and I'm holding it up, and I flip it forward, and now my spikes are down in the dirt, and they're set. And it's never gonna go anywhere. To get the spikes back and the feet flat, all you got to do is raise it back up, and now the feet are flat. 

You can see on uneven ground this single self levels itself on uneven ground. It's the word Werner self leveling a ladder feet. Absolutely amazing but I'm working back here in the grass. Some get my spikes set and there we go now my ladders good and safe.

All right we are all done with day three. I got what I set out to do today, and I wanted to get all the soffits above all these high peaks done. I wanted to get the dormers done. Very difficult install. Ladder jacks all over the roof where I can get on the roof with different means use a six-foot ladder. One of the ladder jacks extension ladders. 

So I got everything done and accomplished a little bit sooner than I thought. That happens often and how our professional painters and decorator save you time and money up front and in the long run. I know somebody might have some questions. You know, where do you spray versus where do you brush and roll. 

I typically always bush to roll all the trim, and the body of the house I spray the body spray on as a means to getting on paint a lot faster. It doesn't promote adhesion and penetration like brushing and rolling does, so you definitely wanna brush and roll your fascia and the trim. It's gonna withstand you know the weather. 

It's gonna bond better, but the body you want to get the body on quickly. It's large expanses, but even something like this a metal garage door, like this doesn't have to be back rolled because you don't have to promote you and heat on something like that because it's metal. So you don't have to back roll that on the siding. 

There are places when I'm spraying. I'm gonna be back rolling them before I spray, and not half. Right after I sprayed I found a few places that needs to be hit, back rolled up on these high areas where I didn't have the latter jacks. I didn't do any prepping until I got up there. Once I got the ladder jack's set I did my prep work. 

I did my caulking, my back rolling, and then my spray. And so it's all done now. And we're gonna come back for day four. Now the hard part is done. All that really difficult ladder work is done. We're gonna be doing, I'm just brushing and rolling trim the fun and easy stuff that's gonna be day four. Hopefully this painting and repainting soffits and fascia post will help set you in the right direction.

Not all painters and decorators have the same strategies on painting. Ideally you want to make sure you get a high quality paint job, all of the prep done the right way, a very high quality and very thick exterior paint that will hold up a lot longer than other more popular brands of paints out there. In most cases you can never have enough paint. The more paint the better, even more so on exteriors.

High quality prep and high quality paint and high quality painting can all add up to see to it that its a decade or two or longer before you even need to be thinking about painting your exterior house siding and all of the soffits and fascia. Going into the paint job with better tools, paint, and painting can really help to save you money up front and again in the long run without having to compromise on any aspect of your paint job.

But hey, lets face it, it's not easy work. Exterior house painting is dirty and it can be dangerous. The very best way to get the very best results is to simply call in a pro painter and have the painter complete the painting for you. Ideally you should be ok if your exterior painter can show you a hundred or so exteriors that they have completed that have lasted ten years or longer.

If you are in the market for exterior painting, and you are considering calling in professionals, be sure you give the fine exterior painters at 1/2 Price Pro Calgary Painting a call. Our low cost professional Calgary Painters and decorators can help you with every aspect of your paint job and also help you save time and save money on professional painting.