Exteriors & Envelope
Exterior paintingand stainingpreparation is the job.
Two crews can use the same paint on the same house and get five years apart in result. The difference is entirely in what happened before the first coat.
In detail
Exterior painting & staining
Preparation is washing to remove chalk, dirt and mildew; scraping back everything loose; sanding the hard edges of sound paint so the new coat does not telegraph them; spot-priming bare wood and every knot; and sealing joints that genuinely need sealing while leaving the ones that are meant to drain alone. Caulking every gap on a house is a common and damaging habit — some of those gaps are how the wall breathes and how water leaves.
We also repair before we paint rather than painting over damage. Rotten trim, failed glazing putty, a loose board or a split in a fascia all get made good first, because paint on rot is a decorating decision that hides a building problem for a season. On stain, the honest conversation is about cycle: a clear or semi-transparent finish on a weather elevation in New Jersey will want attention in a few years, a solid stain considerably longer, and you should choose knowing which you are signing up for.
What this covers
- Washed, scraped, sanded and spot-primed before any finish coat
- Rot, failed putty and loose boards repaired before paint hides them
- Joints sealed where sealing is right, and left open where it is not
- A realistic maintenance cycle quoted with the finish, not after it
- Part of
- Exteriors & Envelope
- Typical timeline
- 2–8 weeks
- Where
- All 21 New Jersey counties
Questions
Asked most aboutexterior painting & staining
How often does a house need repainting in New Jersey?
Seven to ten years for a well-prepared paint job on sound substrate, and sooner on southern and western elevations which take the weather. Stains run shorter — a few years for clear and semi-transparent, longer for solid. Preparation affects that interval more than the grade of the paint does.
Should every gap on the exterior be caulked?
No, and over-caulking is a genuine cause of damage. Some joints are designed to drain — the bottom of a lap, the gap under a sill, the weeps in a masonry wall — and sealing them traps water inside the assembly. We seal what should be sealed and leave what should drain, which is a judgement rather than a rule.
The rest of the scope
Everything else inexteriors & envelope
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