Exterior House Painting

When your house needs repainting

Most New Zealand homes need exterior repainting every seven to twelve years, though coastal properties on the North Shore, in Whangarei and around the Bay of Plenty often need it sooner because of salt exposure. The signs worth acting on:

• Chalking — a powdery residue on your hand when you rub the surface
• Cracking or flaking — the coating has lost adhesion and is letting water in
• Fading — particularly on north and west-facing walls taking the most UV
• Swollen or soft weatherboards — water has already got behind the paint film
• Mould or lichen growth — common in shaded and humid spots

Repainting before the coating fails is significantly cheaper than repainting after, because once water penetrates you are paying for timber repair as well as paint.

Preparation — where exterior jobs succeed or fail

The paint itself is a small part of an exterior job's value. What determines whether a finish lasts five years or fifteen is what happens before the first topcoat.

• Wash down — removing dirt, salt, mould and lichen; treating spores rather than just rinsing them
• Scraping and sanding — removing every trace of loose and flaking coating
• Repairs — replacing rotten weatherboard, re-puttying, filling cracks in plaster
• Priming — every bare and repaired surface sealed with the correct primer for the substrate
• Gap sealing — flexible sealant at junctions to keep water out while allowing movement
• Two topcoats — applied at the manufacturer's specified spread rate

If a quote you receive is dramatically cheaper than others, the difference is almost always in this list.

Different claddings need different systems

Timber weatherboard needs a flexible system that accommodates seasonal movement, with particular attention to end grain and board joints where water enters first.

Plaster and stucco needs crack repair and a breathable coating that lets trapped moisture escape rather than blistering the film.

Fibre cement (Hardiplank, Titan Board) is stable but needs correctly sealed cut edges and fixings.

Brick and blockwork needs a masonry-specific system; standard house paint traps moisture and fails early.

Specifying the wrong system for the cladding is one of the most common causes of premature failure we are called in to fix.

Weather and timing in New Zealand

Exterior painting needs dry surfaces, temperatures above roughly 10°C, and no rain for several hours after application. In practice this means October through April is the reliable window across most of the North Island, though settled autumn and winter spells are often workable in Auckland and further north.

We monitor forecasts and will postpone rather than apply coatings in marginal conditions. A day's delay costs nothing; paint applied to a damp substrate fails within a couple of years.