On the Level
by Terry Meany
Wood is the most traditional and widely used building material in America. From toothpicks to violins to the Conservatory of Flowers, wood prevails. And why shouldn’t it? It’s a renewable resource, easily cut and shaped to do our bidding, and offers strength and flexibility. The first settlers took one look at all those forests back East and knew, if nothing else, they could at least put a roof over their heads and keep the home fires burning.
We expect a lot from wood and offer little in return. One day it’s out in the forest as an oak or fir or redwood tree, telling its saplings not to play with matches; and the next day it’s been cut, stripped of its protective bark, cut off from nutrients and trucked to a lumber mill for a future as two-by-fours or a set of nesting salad bowls—so much for aging gracefully and turning into mulch and termite food.
In its natural state, wood contains a lot of water and some sap. Once a tree has been cut, it begins to dry out. Further drying—either air drying or kiln drying or both—is done prior to and after milling. The percentage of moisture present in the final wood product varies, but it is almost always under 20 percent. As a property owner, you want to keep all your structural and finish wood dry and sealed. Surprisingly, in a town full of wood buildings, this is a very foreign idea.
Strip away the bark from a tree, and the wood is as exposed as Martha Stewart’s email trail. If we expect this wood to stand up to the elements again, we have to duplicate the bark and control the effects of sunlight, water and airborne pollution. Any sealant that offers protection will do, but some are much lower maintenance and longer lasting than others. Choosing wisely will keep your building intact, and you’ll have fewer visits and invoices from painting and scaffolding contractors.
Wood finishes fall into two categories: film-forming ones and non-film-forming ones. Paints, polyurethanes, epoxies, solid body stains and varnishes form protective films; stains, water sealers and wiping oils do not. A film-forming finish normally requires multiple coats, including, when appropriate, a primer. Primer and paint are not the same. Primer is manufactured so that it will soak into wood, fill the pores and grain and provide a toothy surface for the paint to adhere to. Using either diluted or full-strength paint as a first coat over raw wood is not as effective as using primer first.
Film-forming finishes offer the best exterior protection but with some caveats. Surface preparation is paramount—some would say preparation is more important than the painting—especially on old buildings. Lead-abatement laws and procedures make prep work expensive. Even if they’re not regularly followed, you’ll be charged for them anyway. Will paying for additional preparation and paint removal now give you a longer-lasting paint job and less frequent future repainting? In theory, sure, but it depends on the reliability of your painter, the weather conditions during the painting and the products used. I’ve seen more projects than I can count where an owner (or painter) skimped on prep work and produced pretty results that began peeling a year later when the warranty expired. As repaint after repaint builds up, eventually you have to strip the old paint down because new paint will have a tougher time adhering.
When paint fails, it allows water to seep underneath and onto and into unprotected wood. As the wood soaks up water (remember, it likes water), it expands; as it dries out, it shrinks. This weathering process splinters and decays the wood. If you’re really lucky, you can end up with a case of wood rot. Do you really want to bear the expense of wood repairs when a good paint maintenance program will avoid it?
On masonry buildings, the most likely candidates for wood deterioration are the windowsills and sashes and the fascia boards along the roof. The weathered sides, typically south and west, will be the worst for any building.
On an existing painted building, your only real choice in finishes is to use paint again. Use a high quality, 100 percent acrylic latex in either a semi-gloss or satin finish on the trim and a flatter sheen on the siding. Semi-gloss is traditional and looks very sharp, if not dramatic, upon completion. It also shows the most contrast as it fades and turns dull on the weathered sides. Every paint fades, regardless of who manufactures it, and dark colors fade the most noticeably.
A number of buildings in San Francisco, both new and old, have unpainted cedar siding and cedar shingle exteriors. The cedar is either coated with clear water-repellent sealer or a semi-transparent stain. Architects and painters who specify these finishes, without discussing the less-than-fun fact that they need frequent recoating, deserve a special place in the afterlife along with 24/7 telemarketers. There is this quaint notion that weathered cedar is somehow attractive and traditional. It’s neither. Weathering is obfuscation for deterioration, which is what you’re looking at when you see extensive cupping, warping, blackened shingles and siding. Clear water sealers and semi-transparent stains soak into wood and act as short-term protection against water. Since they form only a negligible film, if any at all, they need to be reapplied two or three times more often than paint. And who’s going to do that? No one will, except trillionaire owners of second homes in Incline Village where, indeed, the unpainted wood exteriors on high-end homes are beautiful and polished.
Older oak and mahogany entry doors, normally stained and varnished, also need attention. It’s easier to recoat a varnished door once a year than it is to let it go and later completely strip and refinish it. If your door is in need of refinishing, strip off the old finish with methylene chloride paint remover, rinse with lacquer thinner and sand out any stains or rough spots. Apply one coat of oil-based furniture stain and three coats of spar varnish or exterior polyurethane on top. Then recoat once a year if the door is exposed or every three to four years if it’s protected by an enclosure and stays dry. You might be tempted to use an easy-to-apply oil finish, but don’t. It won’t last, and you’ll be worse off than you were before with the old varnish. Neglected doors begin to peel apart from the bottom up and are expensive to repair or replace.
Most interior wood is fine if kept painted, but pay special attention to your windows. The horizontal sections of the sash at the bottom of the glass get the brunt of the sunlight and any condensed moisture running down the glass, especially in the winter. As the water pools, it eventually lifts the paint and settles underneath it, further deteriorating the wood. Check these once a year and touch up as needed. If you have stained and varnished interior woodwork, check the window stools as well. This is the woodwork that is sometimes mistakenly called a sill (the sill is on the outside) and runs along the bottom of the lower sash. These are often ignored and turn a lovely shade of black as the varnish dries up and turns into a crusty finish. You don’t have to strip and refinish the entire window to fix this, just hand sand (the varnish will pulverize) and stain and recoat to match the existing woodwork.
Wood floors are another issue altogether. They look terrific when they’re installed or refinished, but they never stay that way. On top of that, most of your tenant’s oak or fir flooring—the most common hardwood and softwood used for flooring—will be covered with furniture and rugs which begs the question, why bother with them? Refinishing runs $3-to-4 a square foot and despite popular rumor, you can only refinish standard strip flooring two to three times, not over and over. After that, the floor is too thin for additional sanding. It’s a messy job and a number of refinishers get away with choppy looking work because their customers don’t recognize bad sanding when they see it. You can buy a lot of carpet for $3-to-4 a square foot and avoid the dust and fumes from refinishing.
Before you refinish your floors, test a spot with a commercial cleaner/wax mix, applied with fine steel wool. If this cleans up the floor to your satisfaction, the floor can be buffed out instead of refinished. Don’t use a floor scrubber and soap and water. The last time I saw this kind of job—on the owner’s unit, no less—in a misguided attempt to refurbish some oak floors, the result was both mediocrity and mildew between the boards. Although the floors had been refinished eight years earlier, the finish had worn off in large areas due to sun damage; and in another unit the same had occurred from the tenant’s many potted, and leaky, plants. Washing it did no good at all.
So, at least until we’re all living in plastic housing, keep your painter’s number on speed-dial.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the viewpoint of the SFAA or the San Francisco Apartment Magazine. Terry Meany is a former contractor and landlord. He is now a full-time writer and author of Working Windows: A Guide to the Repair and Restoration of Wood Windows published by Lyons Press. He’s cost conscious, but not cheap, and knows deferred maintenance always costs more in the end. He can be reached at tfmeany@msn.com. Copyright © 2004.