At our wits end with exterior painting

We are painting our home for the first time since we've owned it. I think it's masonite siding. I know, not good, but it's what we have. The current paint is not in terrible shape, a little peeling here and there but it's been on there for about 8 years and looks pretty good for its age. But it needs to be redone because of some additions, damage, repairs, etc. So we had it pressure washed, bought good quality primer and went to it. The primer is adhering great to the first coat of old paint, but the primer and that top coat of paint is now peeling off in sheets from the coat below it. We actually had to get our pressure washing guy out and he washed off all the primer/paint we had applied. We've tested both the old layers with denatured alcohol as suggested elsewhere and they both seem to be latex. What in the world are we to do? Scraping won't help, because the paint is sound before we apply primer. Sanding or stripping all the old paint off seems like an insurmountable task and with Masonite I'm not sure we could even do it. Meanwhile, winter's coming, I have a wedding in December and now my house looks like hell, three different colors and spackle patches where we fixed damage from the pressure washing. HELP!!!!

 

Welcome to the forums!

What type of primer did you use? latex or oil? brand?

It sounds like the previous paint job may have been applied over a chalky surface. Paint doesn't adhere well to chalk. Adding another layer of paint increases the pressure for it to peel. Is the backside of the paint that peels off, chalky?

Unfortunately, if that is the reason for the peeling paint -there isn't any easy solution
Basically you need to remove all the paint applied over the chalk before you can go about applying paint correctly.

 

Thanks, Mark. I was hoping you'd reply. We are using Zinsler 123 latex primer. Not sure about the chalkiness of the peeled off layer. It's really dry and discolored, though. Is that chalk? This house was a rental when last painted and I think they went cheap with the paint and didn't do good prep. I was hoping for a magic solution (turn around three times and chant "there's no place like Sherwin-Williams," something like that) but I'm not surprised at your answer. We considered trying an oil-based primer but weren't sure it would (1) work over latex at all and (2) help much in this situation. Is that worth a shot? Or do we call our vinyl siding contractor?

Thanks again!

Cindy

 

Take your finger and rub it across the back of the peeled sections of paint and across the area that the paint fell off of. If it's chalky, there will be a residue/film that stays on your fingers.

There aren't any primers that will magically soak thru the top layer [s] of paint to bond to the siding and any coating applied over a suspect coating, is only as good as the underlying adhesion.

What you might try would be to aggressively sand the siding . . and then coat the siding with a good oil base exterior wood primer. That should give you a decent surface to apply latex house paint to......... either that or cover it up with vinyl.

 

Thanks, Mark. We will try the oil based primer and see what happens. You probably use this symbol a lot in this venue. I prefer this one. Beer 4U2 THANKS!!

Cindy

 

Don't forget to aggressively sand first! If you just apply the oil primer over the existing paint - it might peel

The oil base primer will adhere better to any exposed chalk and if you sand too deep into the masonite - the oil primer will seal it to help gaurd against moisture.

 

You might look into benjamin Moore exterior oil based primer. Fresh Start penetrating primer I think. I used it on my cedar siding and so far good luck. Several local paint places recommended it.