Painting an outside garden wall

sortofwinning

Hello, I got bucketloads of help in here recently about a new bell for my house so now I'm hoping to get some help with painting a wall.


My front garden wall is looking very shabby. I don't know what you call the surface, but it's like painted concrete with tiny stones or something underneath causing a bumpy surface ie it's not smooth and it's not red brick. I've tried googling garden walls in the hope of posting a link here but I can't get a picture of what it's like cos I don't know what it's called. Anyway, I don't think it really matters because basically it's concrete with coats of cream coloured paint on it but the paint is really starting to wear off.


I don't want to have to pay a painter to paint the entire wall, so I want to do it myself. I've got a reasonably artistic streak and am very neat, so I would maybe not do a fantastic job, but with lots of masking tape I could do a good enough job to keep me happy. I painted my entire bedroom once, years ago when I lived in a rented house, and loved the end result.


So all I need to know is:
1) does an outdoor wall need any kind of preparation? Like a primer, or any kind of scrubbing? It's a bit mossy at the bottom so I take it this needs scrubbed? I thought I could buy a hand brush like the ones you get in the pound shop with a shovel just for general indoor use, and just scrub it with the brush and some detergent to get the moss and dirt off?


2) I was in B&Q a few days ago looking at the bells so I know they have an indoor paint section and an outdoor paint section. Do I just buy outdoor paint? I'm sure it'll say on it that it's suitable for masonry or something? I didn't look closely at the paint when I was looking at the bells, cos hadn't thought about doing the walls until I looked at them today and saw that they're really not in a good state, so I didn't really check out the paint at all.


Many thanks for any help.

Jonesya

Yes it'll need preparing - the end result will depend a lot on the quality of the preparation.

I'd treat it with something to kill the moss and any algae first, before giving it a scrub with detergent. I've used patio cleaner type products for preparing fencing which worked ok, or dilute bleach also works and is cheap.The prep is a pain but it's worth it.

You'd normally use exterior masonry paint, it's designed for exactly this type of job.

sortofwinning

Thanks very much Jonesya, I'll try the bleach method. Grateful for your help.

Mr.Generous

The wall sounds like rendering if you're trying to find pictures. That or pebbledash.