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Two Tips for Those Who Want to Give Their Property Exteriors a Makeover

3 August 2018

Tommy Franklin

If you're planning to give the outside of your home a makeover, you may find the following advice to be quite useful.

Repair any cracked sections of your property's guttering at the start of the project

At the very beginning of your project, you should check the condition of your property's gutters and repair any cracked sections of the guttering before proceeding with the rest of the renovation work.

The reason for this is as follows; if it happens to rain heavily just after you have repainted the exterior walls and the gutters are cracked, the rainwater will drain out of the guttering and drench your freshly decorated walls.

Whilst a few drops of rainwater won't have much of an impact on the condition of the walls, a heavy downpour could affect the texture and quality of the wet paint. Too much water on paint which has not fully dried may result in the paint bubbling and peeling off just a few days after it has been applied.

If this should happen, you may have to use paint stripper to remove the paint and then reapply several new coats. This could prolong the renovation process and increase your costs, too.

As such, if you want to finish your renovation work as quickly as possible and are keen to avoid going over budget, you should patch up any cracks in your guttering at the start of the project.

Render and repaint before you repave if you have an asphalt driveway

If you have an asphalt driveway and you intend to repave this as part of the renovation project, you should wait until your exterior walls have been rendered and repainted before you begin the repaving process.

The reason for this is as follows; freshly applied asphalt can take a few days to dry (or up to a week during a period of very hot weather). During this drying period, it will remain soft and fairly malleable.

As such, if you placed a ladder on the new asphalt in order to access and apply new render or paint to the exterior walls that are located directly above the driveway, your ladder may end up leaving permanent indentations in your newly paved asphalt.

Additionally, there is a risk that some of the wet render or paint may splatter onto your driveway. Due to the dark colour of asphalt, any splatter marks are likely to be very noticeable.

Given this, it is best to complete the rendering and repainting of the exterior walls before you begin to repave the driveway.

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