Painting over Cladding?

hobnobs_mummy

We have just bought a house that has some really ugly cladding around the fireplace from floor to celing and an old style gas fire.

We cant afford to take the gas fire out straight away so that will have to stay for a while but wondered about painting over the horrible cladding surrounding it.

It is currently a nice manky brown which looks like fence paint with a gloss ha.
What products and procedure would anyone recommend for painting it? I was thinking of painting it white.

Leif

I am redoing my porch which connects the garage to the house. It has some wooden cladding on the garage wall side. I hate cladding but I decided it was not worth removing. It had been varnished, badly, with the varnish clumping into blobs for some reason. I sanded it down with a power sander, then primed it, two coats, using Zinsser 123, but thinned down, I am sure a general acrylic primer would have been as good. When I get round to it I'll put two coats of white satin oil based paint on the cladding. It is worth using a decent brush, it will not lose bristles,and the finish will be better. Purdy are good. Avoid one coat and non drip paints. All the pros told me they are carp. You also need to learn how to apply the paint neatly, and how to lay off. I found I had to thin the paint, about 10% white spirits, to get it to spread properly. I am sure there are tutorials on YouTube. A neat paint job could make your cladding look really good.