This year I purchased a hand held gas leaf blower that is very light weight and compact. I thought I would try to make my gutter cleaning chores easier than they had been in the past. I placed my ladder in one spot against the house at the start of the gutters, started my leaf blower and climbed up on the roof. I started to blow out the gutters with the leaf blower and low and behold was done with all the gutters in 20 minutes! Something that would take me a painful and agonizing hour and a half was just reduced to 20 min! I was very excited how I just discovered to simplify this awful chore. As always, be careful climbing ladders and walking on the roof.

Preparing your home for painting can be broken down into two areas: tools and surface preparation.

Tool preparation is necessary to get all of your tools in one place, a central work area, for your project. Gather all of your tools you will need for the job and put them in one place. Some of the more common tools that are necessary for an exterior painting project are:

• Paint Brushes
• Paint Rollers & Roller Naps
• Sand Paper & Sanding Blocks
• Paint Stirring Sticks
• Ladders
• Scrapers
• Masking tape
• Sponge or mop
• Paintable Caulk
• Wood Filler or Putty

For the surface preparation, you must create a sturdy, clean surface for the paint to adhere to. In order for the paint to adhere, it must be clean and dry. If there is mold on the surface it must be removed before painting or the paint will not stick. Any rotten wood must be repaired with wood putty or replaced prior to painting.
Remove anything that you can from the exterior of the house including house numbers, shutters, signs, wreaths, and any other accessories that can be removed easily. Anything that can not be removed will have to be painted around and will make painting more difficult.

Scrape the surface using a paint scraper to remove any loose old paint. Next sand the area where flakes have been removed to make the ridge between the old paint and the underlying surface less pronounced. The idea is not to necessarily sand off any paint that did not come off with scraping, but only to make the edge less pronounced once the new paint is applied.

Trim any shrubs or bushes so that they are at least a few inches away from the house. You will need to paint behind them and trimming them now is better than when there is wet paint near the wall with shrub trimmings flying into the fresh paint.

Once all the scraping and sanding is complete, wipe down the surfaces with a mild solution of bleach and water. This will remove loose flakes of old paint, spider webs, bugs, and any standing mold and mildew that may be on the surface. This can be applied with a sponge, a mop, or a brush and rinsed by spraying down with a garden hose.

Caulk any cracks between windows and doors and the siding. Hammer in any protruding nails and fill in any holes in the siding and trim with wood putty or paintable caulk.

Give everything about a day to dry and you are ready to paint! Proper surface preparation will make the painting go more smoothly since you will not have to stop and remove paint, bugs, nests, etc. but will be able to continuously keep a wet edge of paint while coating the surface.