Painting and Decorating in Summer

Spot me on the ladder!

This is me about 30 feet up a ladder.

One of the problems in the UK is the weather. We don’t get wall to wall sunshine. After all it’s the UK and we unfortunately get a large amount of rain which for me is frustrating. There is nothing worse than starting to paint a house that takes between 3-5 days to complete, only to have to stop after a day because it’s started raining. 

There’s two reasons. Firstly, it delays the next job by however many days I lose out to the weather. Secondly, I’m self-employed so it’s really simple. If I don’t work I don’t earn and like the rest of us I have bills to pay too! 

Over the last five weeks I have painted the exterior of seven houses and bungalows. All have had different finishes on the walls which could either be pebbledash, rough cast, or a smooth finish. I have to admit it’s been very hard work, but incredibly rewarding when you look at the finished look of the property and how pleased the customer is. The hard work has been all worth it. 

The last of seven properties was a bungalow which had not seen paint on the walls in about 15 years, so it was looking very tired, dull and quite honestly a mess!

I prepared all the surfaces and then using a brush for the first coat I applied Dulux Weathershield Masonary Magnolia paint, The second coat was applied with a roller.

All the window-sills were painted in Dulux Weathershield Wasonary White paint applying two coats and finally I stained the hard wood frames of all the windows in Mahogany Sadolin Stain to complete the job. 

Before

This took three days to complete from start to finish and as you can see I think it’s stunning. Giving all the exterior walls a huge lift and this will not need painting for a minimum of 10 years. 

Summer in the UK is very unpredictable as far as the weather is concerned, but it’s the only time that I am able to paint exteriors of properties. 

I could quite easily start doing the weather forecast on ITV when you consider how many times I’m checking the weather during the summer months!