If you are looking for a quick and efficient way to paint your fence and get an output that won’t disappoint you, you should try spray painting. Your best bet would be to get a professional fence painter. It is nevertheless important to understand what a fence painter is supposed to do. Expect him to;
| Tools | Materials |
|---|---|
| Bucket | Drop sheet |
| Dust mask | Masking tape |
| Gloves | Paint |
| Hand sander | Sanding block |
| High-pressure cleaner | Sandpaper |
| Paintbrush | |
| Paint scraper | |
| Safety glasses | |
| Spray paint | |
| Stirring stick |
We grow plants along the fences, rest things against them and leave stuff around them. So before you paint your fence, tie back and cover your garden, remove any bikes or cars, brush away any dirt and lay down a drop cloth.
Wash the fence with a high-pressure cleaner to get rid of surface grime and flaking paint. When the timber is dry, use sandpaper to scrape the pickets to enhance the smoothness and remove any remaining paint.
To ensure you achieve the best results possible, use a wire brush to remove imperfections on old fences and an anti-moss solution to combat mould.
A spray gun works well when the paint is properly diluted. If your paint is thin, then you need about 50 millilitres of paint for every litre of water, and if it is thick, you will need 100 millilitres per litre. Once you have mixed the water and paint, pour the mixture into the spray gun. You will need to mask all the areas you don’t want to be sprayed before you start spraying.
Spray your fence with the spray gun held at an angle along the fence so that you evenly spread the paint on both the picket’s edges and faces. After applying the paint on the entire fence, you can even out the drips or thick sections with a paintbrush. Take extra care of the screw heads because they are more likely to have paint dripping. Do not apply the second coat until the first one is completely dry.
Tip: Don’t paint on a windy day, or you may end up painting your car or house.
While you can use a brush or a roller to paint surfaces that have been well prepared, you are well advised to use a spray gun on your fence as it is the most efficient for large areas. It uses less paint and covers more ground. The spray gun can get paint even along the impossible corners of the fence.
Get an experienced hand to do your fence painting because it can be quite challenging for the inexperienced hand. As with any other home improvement project, always get quotes before choosing your professional and allowing work to commence.
Use an online directory tool like Service Seeking to get a fence painter. You can then make a short list to get estimates through onsite visits from the selected painters.
Photo courtesy of Pexels Images by Pixabay
It does not matter whether you paint or stain the fence, as either one of these methods will elongate the life of your fence as well as protect it from rot, wear and tear, and insects.
If you are using a wooden fence, staining is better than painting as wood absorbs stain more deeply than paint. Stain also naturally fades away, unlike paint that gets worn out, starts to peel, and eventually looks unkempt.
In particular, if your fence is made of cedar, you should avoid painting since it does not allow the wood to breathe, which eventually reduces the lifespan of the fence. It is a shame if you don’t use the beautiful northern white cedar on your fence or you will have to replace it just because you cannot spend a little more to stain it rather than painting it.
You don’t have to give up colours if you stain a fence instead of painting it. You need to get a solid stain. They aren’t limited to brown stain since they come in colours such as grey, peach, indigo, pink, yellow, blue, green and red.
For those who love the natural colour of the wood, you can use a transparent stain that will allow you to see the natural grain of the wood on your fence.
Gallon for gallon, the stain is cheaper, but you will need more of it. If you are looking to spend less in the long term, you can use stain instead of paint because you don’t need to replace it as often as you would do with paint.
Another cost advantage of the stain over paint is that when repainting, you will need to scrape and clean the old peeling paint. With stain, you just need to clean the old stain and then reapply the new stain. This takes less time.
After a fencing project is complete, you will need to retouch all the spots that don’t look similar to the rest of the fence. A project that would take hand-painting weeks will take just a few hours with spray paint.