You CAN create your own successful home improvement renovation

To give you hope of better things to come I thought you'd appreciate a tip for improving any summer exterior house painting project you might be thinking about. I know it's only early March but you're probably sick and tired of winter's grip. Some dreaming about your home improvement projects for this summer might pull you out of the winter blues. There's only the promise of spring in my city against the Pacific. The 7 inches of rain we suffered through over 36 hours in eary March proves that. If you live in the Pacific Northwest maybe you can skip the power washing cycle you think you need in preparation for your exterior house painting.

So the time is right to get excited about home improvement or gardening ideas you'd like to get done this summer. If you think it's too early to think about exterior home improvement, let me tell you my entire summer was booked by the end of February.

Now if this year is anything like other summers, a couple of these clients will cancel their exterior home renovations. Either weather or other ideas on how to spend the money will change their plans. What I've learned for my own business stability is to overbook the jobs. Obviously this becomes a problem if the weather stays great and I get no cancellations. But that rarely happens. In fact there's only one thing I can predict with certainty. When the weather's great we work hard. The days off will be provided by Mother Nature. Just go for it when the heat and sun hit.

Just the opposite happened last summer. I'd assembled a great crew and was totally prepared to enjoy the best time of the year. Despite the risks of having bad weather change the time and task schedule, I still enjoy the season for exterior house painting. It's hard to beat earning your living outside from May through October. My clients get excellent workmanship and top quality home improvement painting. After my Dad had a stroke, my work season was shortened by taking some serious time off. It was time well spent with him helping him through recovery. Being back east was a good reminder that no matter where you live as an adult, home will always be home.

But like everything, there's no big secret to doing a good job if you're willing to learn the skills and refuse to cut corners. I believe you can give your own home a beauty coat of exterior paint if you want to tackle the task. I know it's a painting project on a grand scale but it can be done.

My purpose with this segment is to inspire you with a few exterior house painting tips or help you hire the right contractor to perform the work for you. Either way, despite it still being winter, I'll help you now. There won't be time later in the year for me to write this because I'm booked. Summer days are long and an exterior house painting project fills those days easily. There's no extra time for sitting at a keyboard and writing home improvement tips. Or to be honest, extra energy for that matter. Exterior home improvement is 'Big' work, uses 'Big' ladders and takes 'Big' effort.

We all see the results of so many disasterous exterior painting projects. The least I can do is help you think the process through. You can get a few ideas for yourself or questions you can ask your contractor.

Quite often there are a few examples of bad workmanship right in your own neighborhood. Study those and see how they stack up against what you learn here.

A cardinal sin in my eyes is to leave laps on the house. You'll see this all the time on either low bid work or (and I hate to say this) but with these various 'student painter' companies springing up every summer only to fall into the trap of poor workmanship. (puns intended) So many people think anybody with a ladder and a brush is a painter. This trade takes serious skill, attention to safety practices and detailed workmanship.

Lapping the house is obvious to even the untrained eye. Standing back at the curb you can easily see where the ladders were. The very worst example is painting horizontal siding vertically. You can easily see it in your mind's eye. Patchy stucco runs a close second.

By the way this is something I never do nor will I allow anyone on my crew to cheap out on this. Pay the price in the extra work because the results are professional. Sure it means more work but who wants to see the vertical laps up and down the house.

I've lost money on an individual job because I will not cut this corner. We've been held up by bad weather to the point where the job is running well behind. I don't care. My job is to give my customer the best exterior paint job possible for the money they're paying. I will not nickel and dime the owner for the extra time because it's not the way I build my business. The money a weather delay might cost me is tiny. Insisting on doing things the right way has come back to me 10 fold in more business than you can imagine. If you're doing this yourself, take this

Move the ladder side to side. That's right. It's that simple but you'd be shocked at how many people won't make the extra effort. Sure it's a little more work. The results show for themselves. When you paint your exterior you can not get away with working vertically from one ladder placement. You can see the results of incorrectly working top-to-bottom in every neighborhood.

If the cladding is vertical it's a different story. I said we'd use horizontal siding as an example so let's do that first. I'll even use a worst case senario and say we're not spraying but painting the siding by hand.

This means it's even more important to apply the material correctly. Just based on the height factor alone you're going to be working slowly. If the house is set up correctly, spraying can be so fast there's slightly more leeway with lapping. But not much. If you're doing this on your own, you won't be spraying anyway so we'll keep it simple.

At the peak of the gable end it's fairly easy once you get over your fear of the ladder. This height is as bad as it gets unless you've got to step off the ladder on to the roof to paint dormers or chimney cladding. Just remember that falling off a ladder never hurt anybody. It's only the rapid deceleration at the bottom that'll kill you.

So my point is, once you work down so far you can't span the entire gable end, you've got to move the ladder and start working side-to-side instead of vertically. You can paint down either side of the ladder. Lower it to the bottom of that freshly painted area, fill in the ladder space quickly spreading back into the wet edge on either side. When I get a little more time I'll post a photo right about here of a high gable end that took a 60 foot ladder to reach.

Lower again, start at the right soffit and begin the new program of 3-4-5 boards at a stretch. Move the ladder along to the left and blend back into the wet edge again. Work sideways until that horizontal section is done over to the other soffit. Pick the number of boards relative to the heat of the day.

Moving this way always keeps a blended edge and you won't be going back up the ladder into dry paint like you would if you were cheaping out and working vertically. Remember you can reach well away from yourself as long as your hips are inside the ladder beams.

The work is easier as you move lower because the ladder isn't so extended. You'll have clear lap free siding. If you work quickly, even with todays faster drying

I received an hilarious email from a good friend last night. He was in the process of stripping out the plaster and lath walls in the old house and wanted to get started with the drywall. During the course of reading his letter I realized how easily a task I'd take for granted can spiral into a disaster and create a real problem for a do-it-yourself-er. I'm short of time right now but I'll address his comments as the days move on. For now I want you to know you shouldn't cut drywall with an electric skil saw. It's a little dusty and as he also found out, you'll break the board in many places. There's a simple way and I'll outline it for you next week.

You might be asking yourself 'why is an article on video camcorders on a web site devoted to helping you plan and create your successful home renovation.' To help you in your own home improvement project I feel I need to ramp up my photo record of projects. To be totally honest I've not completely convinced myself of the merits of this idea. There are two reasons.

Firstly you can already avail yourself of some pretty thorough photo essays I've done complete with written step-by-step instructions. Just contact me. Also I'm a little too busy to learn a new technology as complicated as video and it's presentation on the internet. The huge payoff for you with me trying this new approach is I can film more complicated processes that might be clearer visually to you that the written word. Frankly I'm just bored and ticked off seeing goofy basement handyman ideas promoted on the web. I'd like to help you by doing my part to explicitly showing you not only the how but also the WHY. My mind works better knowing WHAT the benefits are and WHY a thing is done better one way than the other. I think most of us think like that so I'm exploring video. Having said that, don't hold your breath because knowing the way my schedule is, I shouldn't be announcing this in '07, if you get my drift.

It's hard to admit I've taken nearly 6 months to make my decision on my camcorder purchase. What can be so tough about a tech decision is knowing the right questions to ask. A camcorder is probably the most complicated and potentially expensive buy you can make. On top of the hardware side of the equation, you can become really confused about what recording format you want to use. They all have their advantages. What about the software issues and ease of editing. As a friend said to me one rainy day when she was suffering through my questions ...pick your compromises and make a freakin' decision!

The one thing going in my favor was this. Throughout the lengthy research process I learned to define exactly what my application is. And being human, it took a lot of thinking. I got to know some excellent salespeople quite well. I had to resist my urge to jump the gun and make an emotional decision. There are times I'm sure you'll agree when you'd just like to get playing with your new toy and have some fun!

Cameras are exciting but the wrong decision can be an expensive disaster. Like many things in life, when all things come together...when all the pieces fit...you just know it.