Why Your Painter Should Find the Wood Rot Before the Paint Goes On

Most wood rot in Tallahassee gets discovered the same way. A house gets painted. It looks great. About a year later a strip of paint on the fascia lifts, then bubbles, then a whole section flakes off. Under it, the board is soft, gray, and wet. It was soft when the paint went on. Nobody checked.

We have painted houses here since 1998, and we would rather find that board at the estimate than get the call twelve months later.

Paint does not stop rot. It hides it.

Rot is a fungus eating damp wood. Paint is a skin. Put the skin over the fungus and two things happen. First, the wood keeps rotting, because the moisture is already inside it. Second, the paint has nothing solid to grip, so it fails early, usually right where the water is getting in. You have paid for a paint job and a rot repair, and you still have both problems.

Good wood, primed and painted, sheds water for years. Rotten wood, painted, sheds paint by the next wet season. That is the whole argument.

Why this town grows rot

Three reasons, all local, and they apply in every Tallahassee neighborhood we paint.

Humidity. Tallahassee summers run more than seven inches of rain a month from June through August, with ten or eleven wet days and highs of 91 and 92, according to NOAA's 1991 to 2020 normals for the airport station. Wood on the shaded side of a house may not dry out for weeks at a stretch. Wood that stays damp rots. (The full month-by-month picture is in when to paint a house exterior in Tallahassee.)

Storm season. Hurricane season is June 1 through November 30. Wind-driven rain gets up under fascia and behind trim in places a normal shower never reaches. It sits there. Trim that comes loose in a storm was often going soft before the wind ever touched it.

Sprinklers and gutters. These do as much damage as the weather. A sprinkler head that soaks the same corner board every morning. A gutter that overflows onto the fascia behind it. Those two cause a lot of the rot on otherwise sound houses.

Where it hides

Rot rarely announces itself. Some of what tips us off at an estimate:

• Paint bubbling or lifting in one spot while the rest of the wall is fine.
• Caulk pulling away at a joint, especially where trim meets siding.
• A hairline crack running along the bottom of a window sill.
• Fascia that looks wavy from the ground, or a gutter that has pulled away from it.
• Door trim that is darker at the bottom corners than at the top.
• The lowest course of siding, or a corner board, that looks a little swollen.

The test is not fancy. Press a screwdriver into the wood. Good wood pushes back. Rotten wood gives, sometimes an inch deep behind paint that looked fine. Marshall or Gerard walks the whole house at the free estimate before a price goes on paper, and that is when soft wood gets found.

Minor rot versus the kind that needs a contractor

Minor wood rot is a section of fascia, a piece of trim, a window sill, a run of siding. It is on the outside of the house, it is not holding anything up, and it can be cut out and replaced with new wood, primed, caulked, and painted along with the rest of the job. This is the minor wood rot and carpentry repair we do as part of an exterior repaint.

Structural rot is when the soft wood has gone past the trim and into framing, sill plates, headers, or anything carrying load. That is not painter work. Gerard has said it for years: you really don't want your painter handling the wood rot repairs. He works with several contractors and has one of them help with the repairs. If we find that at your house, we tell you before we quote the paint, and we point you toward the right help.

Knowing the difference is part of the job. A painter who says "we can fix anything" is either not looking closely or not telling you something.

Why repairs are billed by time and material

We can see the surface of a rotten board. We cannot see how far the rot runs behind it until the board comes off. So we do not guess a flat price for repairs. The written quote shows the painting as its own number and the repairs as time and material: the hours it takes and the lumber, primer, caulk, and fasteners it uses. If it turns out smaller than we thought, you pay less. If it turns out bigger once it is open, we stop and call you before going further.

The order things happen on the job

Wash first. Pressure washing knocks off mildew and pollen, and a wet wall often turns up a soft spot nobody saw from the ground. Then repairs. Bad wood comes out, new wood goes in and gets primed. Then caulk. Then paint, with the rest of the exterior. We do not seal a fresh repair in the rain. If it rains for three days, the repair waits until the wood is dry.

Questions we get about this

Can you just paint over it and see how it holds up?

We will not. It does not hold up. You would be paying us to hide a problem that gets worse under the paint, and we would be the ones you call when it peels.

Will the repair show?

New wood is primed and painted with the rest of the house, so once the job is done it looks like the rest of the trim.

How much does wood rot repair cost?

Time and material, on top of the painting quote. We explain both numbers at the estimate. Every house is different, and so is every board.

I think I have rot. What should I do before you come out?

Not much. Do not paint over it and do not caulk over it. Make a note of where you saw it and point it out when Marshall or Gerard walks the house at your free estimate. A small repair now beats a big one later, and rot does not wait on anybody's painting schedule.