Barns, shops and metal buildings.

Why most painters decline these

An outbuilding is not a bigger house. The substrates are different, the access is different, the coatings are different, and the square footage is large enough that a wrong product choice is expensive. Most residential crews would rather do three bathrooms.

Out here that leaves a lot of property owners with a sixty-year-old barn nobody will touch.

Metal buildings

Pole barns, equipment sheds and shops with steel skin are the most common and the most commonly done wrong.

• Rust has to be dealt with, not covered. Coating over active rust produces a film with rust spreading underneath it. Mechanical removal back to sound metal, then a primer formulated for metal.
• Galvanized surfaces reject ordinary paint. New galvanizing in particular needs the right primer or the coating sheets off in large pieces.
• Fasteners and seams are where it starts. Hundreds of screw penetrations, each a potential rust point, and a quick pass over the field of a wall misses every one.
• Chalked old coatings must be washed thoroughly. On a large metal wall, chalk is the most common adhesion failure we are called back to fix.

Wood barns and older timber

Genuinely old agricultural wood is dry, often unpainted or decades past its last coat, and extremely thirsty.

The decision is film or penetrating. A film coating on severely weathered barn wood tends to fail quickly because the surface fibers it is bonding to are already loose. A penetrating stain soaks in, has nothing to peel from, and renews with a clean and recoat rather than a strip. On most old barns we will recommend stain and say why.

The traditional red barn look is achievable in a solid stain if that is what you want.

Interiors that are working buildings

Shop and equipment-building interiors are a different specification again. Coatings there are chosen for washdown, abrasion and light reflectance rather than appearance, and a white or light ceiling and upper wall makes a working space dramatically more usable.

Practical matters on acreage

• Access and height. Many of these structures need lift equipment, and that belongs in the estimate rather than appearing later.
• Wind. A tall metal wall on open ground is a poor place to spray on a windy day, which is most days in spring.
• Livestock and operations. Tell us what is in the building and what has to keep running; we schedule around it.
• Water supply. Washing a large structure takes real volume, and on well systems that is worth discussing in advance.