DIYbanter - View Single Post - Cedar shingle siding

wrote:
I am preparing to paint my house within the next few weeks. I have considered using Sherwin Williams Duration paint, but my fiancee has a 20% discount available at HD, so it's
much more cost effective for me to go that route. The siding was originally stained, and has not been stained or painted since it was installed more than a decade ago (long
before the house was in my possession).

Am I better off going with latex- or oil-based paint? Also, should I prime the siding before painting it? Any advice would be greatly appreciated - I have done painting work
before, but this is my first exterior project.

You're better off going with stain, like what was originally applied.
Stain doesn't blister and peel off like paint will. You just wash the
siding (NOT a pressure washer!), allow to dry for a few days, and then
apply the stain. If the siding is painted, you need to preceed that
procedure with days of scraping and sanding the blistering paint.

If for some reason you insist on using paint, prime first with a
linseed oil based primer (also know as "slow-drying" or "long oil"
primer), and then topcoat with two coats of latex paint. Oil-based
paint does not flex like latex does, so in exterior applications it
fails sooner than latex will. Plus I'm not even sure you can buy
oil-based exterior paint any more due to VOC content rules. One
exception is that you may want to use oil based paint on wood windows
to reduce blocking (painted window parts sticking to each other, even
after the paint is dry.)

And if you go to but the paint, IMO you shouldn't consider the cost at
all. $20/gal for cheap paint vs. $30/gal for good paint is not worth
worrying about. When the cheap paint fails and you spend a week on a
ladder scraping and sanding, you will regret the relatively small
amount of money you save. I value my time more than the small amount
of money saved by buying cheap materials for most home repair projects
I work on, including paint. If the choice for paint is between
Sherwin-Williams and HD, I wouldn't even consider HD (probably Behr you
are talking about?) Also consider Benjamin Moore paint. I'm sure
others will chime in with their recommendations.

Ken