no primer on old cedar siding?

i have 30 year old cedar that has been painted many times. many coats of old paint that peel off in splotches. I scrape, wash the whole wall, prime the bare spots with oil, and cover the whole mess with a coat of latex paint. that is my routine.

this year I hired a painter. he is not using primer on the bare wood - just scraping and applying a coat of acrylic latex.

do I need to insist he uses primer?

do I need to insist he goes back and removes all the paint he applied to bare wood?

Frankly the siding on this house is junk and needs to be replaced, but I've decided to sell the house so I'm just going to give it one last paint job before we jump ship.

 

I would be upfront with potential buyers that the siding has seen better days and let the painter finish as he has been proceeding.

 

I'm concerned latex paint will not survive the winter without an undercoat of primer. and next spring i'll be doing it all over just when I'm planning to put the house on the market.

will paint stick to bare weathered wood without a primer coat?

to be clear --- the areas that i have scraped bare and applied oil primer do seem to hold up pretty well for a few years. it's all the old layers of paint that I'm not able to completely scrape off --- those are the areas that peel.

I took a grinder to one wall and ground it down to clean bare wood --- that wall gets 100% sun exposure and is still sticking well after 4 years. alkyd primer is the base coat.

 

How big are the raw areas he's applying the paint too? What does the contract [if any] specify? The biggest reason for an oil primer on cedar is to seal in any tannin bleed but any raw wood should have some type of primer prior to applying the paint. It's ok to not prime minor areas of raw wood if the majority of the paint is sound.

It sounds like the biggest issue is with the old paint. Ideally the paint would be stripped down and primed/painted like you did with that one wall. Is your painter offering any warranty on the paint job. If he gives you a 1 yr warranty [and you trust him to stand by it] I wouldn't be as leery about the lack of primer.

 

the bare areas vary from large 2ft section of a board where all the paint came off in a sheet, to small alligatored/checked areas. when i did it I would prime everything. if there was a section of checked/alligatoring paint I would scrape the little loose bits off and prime the whole area.

the cedar was originally oil stained with clear silicone caulking. at some point a previous owner hired high school kids to just slap paint over the whole house. now i'm dealing with the mess.

the painter is offering no warranty he knows the house is a perpetual peel machine. But I did tell him to prime the bare spots so they wouldn't immediately peel again. we have no contract.

 

I'd want it oil primed! Also if the existing paint is chalky and the chalk wasn't washed off, the oil primer will help to bind the chalk - latex paint doesn't adhere well to chalk

The areas where the paint has alligatored will peel sooner or later. It's common to paint over them [which will postpone the peeling] when the time/money isn't there to strip the old paint.

 

I've changed my mind with your additional details - I'd want this primed now as well.