painting a house

So my parents house has not been very well kept in the last 25 years. We recently got a letter from the city demanding that we paint our house or face fines. I dont know if you can do that but whateves, moving forward.

Im looking into power painters to make the job easier. I know about the handheld wagners but i was thinking something more heavy duty. Ive narrowed it down to these two.

amazon

its some wagner power painter that can feed directly off 5 gallon buckets and its $205 on amazon

harbor freight

This is some harbor freight special that i can pick up for $160 using the 20% coupon. its beefier then the wagner but then again it has that harbor freight stigma that it could be crap.

anyone have any experience with power painters or painting in general?

I just painted mine with a Wagner. Other than listening to it for hours, it did a good job. Buy a set of ear plugs if you go that route.

And look into renting a bucket truck. The amount of time it saves over constantly moving the ladder is amazing. Years ago I painted my sister's 3 story house in under a day. We had an extra section of hose. I was up in the bucket and my dad kept the paint bucket full down on the ground.

I have a 20yo electric Wagner. Works just fine, but I agree with the earplug idea...

Rent an industrial airless sprayer.

Thin some latex paint and put it on with a pump-up sprayer?

Worked for wood stain. Dunno about paint.

In reply to Dr. Hess:

The two models i have up there have been labeled as airless sprayers. does that mean they both should suffice or should i step up to industrial?

Paint it with that antique / crackle finish paint - that'll show 'em.

goto your local rental place and rent an airless sprayer. it will be a much better quality then one of the ones in the OP.

shwerin williams for instance rents sprayers.

If you don't plan on using it again soon, yeah, a rental looks like a better idea. Especially if you get industrial vs. homeowner quality.

Related advice: Its quite possible the house was painted with an oil based paint. It is likely you will paint it with latex. The latex will adhere to the oil base paint very well, and will be much more flexible than the old oil base product, so as it expands and contracts with the heat, it will pull the old paint right off the wood. Ask me how I learned this....

If you want it to look good for a long time, strip it. If you just want to get the city off your back, scrape the loose stuff and paint.

This may have been what Dr. Hess was referring to

Front snout goes in 5 gallon pail, put on protective equipment, paint the town red!

Yeah, what you have hotlinked are airless sprayers, but an industrial/commercial unit is well worth the money.

About '94, we painted our house in Bryan, TX before we sold it. I rented a commercial airless sprayer. We knocked out the inside and finished up about 8PM or so. We looked at the outside and said, WTF, let's do it. Another trip to the Walmart Supercenter, pick some paint, get it mixed, pick up some beer, back to the house. The paint came out Harley orange. We said, "Looks good" and kept going. About 1AM, back to the supercenter for another bucket of paint and more beer. Finished up 2 or 3AM. The paint did dry to the color Dr.Linda picked, not the Harley orange it came out as, so all was OK. Also, for most of the outside, I just set the gun nozzle backwards to the "clear" position, which shoots a real tight stream a long ways and just shot the eves and everything I couldn't otherwise reach like that. Didn't use a ladder once on the outside. It used more paint that way, but sure saved the time.

In reply to Dr. Hess:

Pointing out you can use one of these indoors has changed my life. I have a lot of paint projects coming up this month!

Mr Kraut: Black is not a color. Tape off the windows.

Another vote for rent airless. I painted my house that way a few years ago. Never will I again try any other way.

You need to get all of the loose stuff of before you paint. A pressure washer would help but then you would have to wait for it to dry. Scraping is a real pain. In the old days they use blowtorches to soften the paint.