Painting house exterior, pics included - advice please :-)

budgie123_2

Again, thanks for the replies! You learn something new every day.

The building is made from stone and when we moved in around 3 years ago it was painted and as far as I know, it's been painted for many, many years. The condition was fine and it's only the past 2 summers that we've had to touch it up, we don't know how it fared in the past.

Dunno if this helps, but here's a pic of the house from further away:

It's south facing and gets lots of sun in summer, but in winter, the hedge in front casts a shadow and the bottom (white part with the ledge) doesn't get any sun at all. We are also 300 feet above sea level and everything round about us is a bit lower.

Am loving the idea of bare stone walls, but right now, we can't afford to do the whole house at once. That would need to wait for a year or two. So, the Earthborn silicate paint (gasp, very expensive but feasible for touching up) is out of the window because it goes on like a limewash and soaks into the stone, rather than coating it....so if we wanted to remove it in future it would be a nightmare.

Am definitely not into the idea of putting on a thick coating now that I know the nature of the building. That photo olias, is very interesting and really shows how it works.

I am now off to Google 'soakaway' and 'french drain'...

keystone

You can tank the inside and/or the outside, increase the depth of gravel and put all the french drains and soakaways in that you like but they won't make any difference. The vast majority of the damage is caused by rain water splashing upwards from the surface of the gravel. You would need to drop the physical top surface of the gravel by between 6 and 9 inches to offset that but then you'll be wanting to paint the bit you've now exposed and the cycle will start again.

Let us know when you get to New Zealand.:D

Cheers