How We Restore Weathered Wood and Exterior Surfaces

It happens on most streets sooner or later. A house gets a fresh coat of paint, and a couple of summers later the trim is peeling again. Why? The new paint went onto a surface that was already coming apart, and it came off with it.

Wood that has gone gray, or that keeps shedding paint, has worn loose at the face. Our surface restoration work gets the wood, the stucco and the joints back to something paint can hold onto. It comes before any new coat, for two reasons.

The first is sun. It wears bare wood slowly, and the softer earlywood goes faster than the harder latewood. The USDA Forest Products Laboratory measured boards left bare outdoors, facing south, for 16 years.

That’s under 2 millimeters in 16 years, or about 6 mm (1/4 inch) a century. Slow. The damage that matters for paint comes much sooner. Uneven wear leaves a ridged face, small cracks open along the grain, and the outer cells come loose. A new coat bonds to that loose layer and lets go when it does.

The second reason is water

Sun wears the surface. Wet wood is what rots, and decay can start once wood passes about 20% moisture.

Humid air alone rarely pushes wood past 20%. Liquid water does, and it gets in through a failed caulk joint, a cracked sill or open end grain. End grain takes in water 10 to 100 times faster than the face of a board. Paint over wet wood is more likely to blister and peel, and the wood keeps rotting underneath it. We dry the wood out and seal it before anything gets coated.

The work, in the order we do it

1. We inspect the surfaces, the old coatings and the materials, inside and out, and write the plan from what we find.
2. On a pre-1978 home or a historic property, we test the old coats for lead before anyone scrapes or sands, and work lead-safe from there. We’re EPA Lead-Safe Certified.
3. Our carpenters cut out the damaged wood and rebuild the trim and siding with sound material.
4. We repair cracks, dents and wear in the stucco and match the texture.
5. Joints, gaps and penetrations get caulked and sealed against moisture.
6. Weak spots, like the head of a window, get added moisture control to reduce the risk of future damage.

Then comes the prep, which is final sanding and priming. Our exterior prep article shows that stage on a real job. If you want to find the soft wood on your own house first, our wood rot guide shows how.

On an older house, plan for lead

Weathered wood on the Peninsula usually sits under decades of paint, and some of those coats are likely to contain lead.

Lead doesn’t change what the surface needs. It changes how we do it, with containment, lead-safe work practices and a careful cleanup. Our article on EPA lead paint requirements in California covers the rules.

Where our part stops

Our CSLB license #803672 carries C-33 Painting and B-2 Residential Remodeling. Under it we repair rot in trim and siding, patch stucco and drywall, and fix other wood that carries no load. Rot in a load-bearing member goes to an appropriately licensed contractor, and so do the roofing or plumbing problems that sometimes sit behind the damage. When we find one, we tell you.

If your siding has gone gray or your paint is letting go, request an estimate or call us at (650) 961-7415.