Any able-bodied person can paint a house.  It can be fun if you skip the preparation, and inexpensive if you use cheap materials, but eventually it’s going to need to be done right.

Because the original paint on this house was of poor quality, the clapboards finally had to be stripped.  The paint was sanded off with a disc-sander and hand-scraped in the corners and edges; the bare wood was sanded smooth with a random-orbit sander; the nails were set, primed, and puttied; cracks at the ends of boards were caulked; and the boards were primed and painted with Benjamin Moore’s tannin-sealing primer and acrylic finish paint.

Steven E. Atwood, PO Box 415, South Chatham, MA 02659.  Semi-retired.