Paint on a house in western Washington does not die of old age as often as people think. It gets killed — usually by water that was already in the wood, sometimes by a coat applied on a day that was too cold, occasionally by a colour that was never going to hold up on a west-facing wall. The useful thing is that each cause leaves a different mark. You can read them yourself, in ten minutes, before anybody quotes you.
Blisters: moisture from behind
Bubbles the size of a coin, often in a cluster, usually low on the wall or under a window. Press one and it gives. Break one open: if there is bare wood underneath, water pushed the film off from the inside. The source is almost always a gutter that overflows, a downpipe that dumps against the siding, or a bathroom fan venting into the soffit instead of outside.
Repainting over this buys you one dry season. The fix is upstream of the paint — the gutter, the vent, the grade of the soil against the wall — and it has to happen first.
Flaking and peeling in sheets: the primer was skipped
Paint coming away in strips, curling at the edge, bare wood behind it. This is an adhesion failure, and on cedar it means bare wood was painted without a tannin-blocking primer, or the siding was washed and coated before it had two or three dry days.
It is the most expensive failure to inherit, because the wall has to come back to a sound edge before anything else happens: scraping, feathering, spot-priming, then two coats. That is also why a bid without the word “primer” on it is not a cheaper bid — it is the same job with the middle removed.
Chalk: the coat finished its life
Run your palm down the south wall. If it comes away dusty and the film is otherwise intact, the binder has broken down under UV. That is not a defect, it is arithmetic: eight to twelve years on a prepped wall, less on the elevations that take the afternoon sun.
Chalk still has to be washed off properly before the next coat, because new paint over chalk releases in about a season. When you hear a crew say they will “just spray over it”, that is the failure being scheduled in advance.
Cracking across the grain
Hairline cracks that follow the board rather than the paint mean the wood is moving — seasonal swelling, a fastener that let go, or a board that is holding water at one end. Caulk and paint hide it for a winter. A screwdriver tells you the truth: if the tip sinks in near the joint, that board is a carpentry line on the estimate, not a painting one.
What this means for your estimate
The four failures above cost different money to correct, and they are why two bids on the same house can be thousands apart. Before you compare numbers, compare what each page says about the wall:
- Does it name the wash, and say how long the siding dries before coating?
- Does it say primer, and say where — bare spots, or the whole wall?
- Does it price carpentry separately, or leave rot as a surprise for day two?
- Does it say two full coats, or leave the number of coats unwritten?
A bid that answers those four is a bid you can compare. One that does not is a number, and numbers are easy to make small.
When to get in touch
If you can see bare wood anywhere, the clock is running — wood that goes into a wet winter uncovered is carpentry by spring. Everything else can wait for the dry window. Either way, two photos and a short text get you a range the same day.