It is very important that you paint your exterior wood trim on your vinyl home every 5-10 years. Combining painting with caulking, scraping, and priming as needed creates a formula for a long – lasting paint job. Because vinyl makes up most of this type of home, it is easy to forget or neglect the wood trim. Taking too long between painting the trim of your vinyl home can cause the wood to delaminate or rot. Everywhere that two pieces of wood meet, it is important that those joints get caulked with an elastomeric, paintable caulk. We use elastomeric caulk exclusively when painting exterior trim on vinyl homes. Elastomeric caulk is more expansive, which will help to keep it from breaking or popping. Good painting contractors use elastomeric caulk. Our process for painting trim on vinyl homes is as follows:

1. Wash the wood. We want to remove the dirt and pollutants from the surface to make sure that the paint sticks to the wood exclusively.
2. Scrape any failing paint. We want to get rid of currently failing paint. Again, we want the paint to stick.
3. We will prime any exposed wood to protect it and to give the paint a good surface to stick to.
4. Caulk wood to wood joints and gaps with elastomeric caulk.
5. Paint it! We like to use high quality paint from Sherwin Williams or PPG. We recommend doing two coats to get a longer life out of the paint job.
6. Let us come back in a year to take another look at the job that we did, and to make sure that it still looks good. We want you as a life-long client, so we want to do a great job for you.

Snow will be here before you know it. The winter in Indianapolis can do damage to your home. It may be a good idea to get out and walk around your vinyl home and pay extra attention to the wood trim on the exterior. If you are not sure if it needs addressed or not, give us a call, and we will come out and give you our professional opinion.