Painting pressure treated wood white

[visual800]

paitn the damn post with exterior flat white and then topcoat with exterior white semigloss and be done. and do not spray use a roller and it will be fine. none of this sleeve crap and none of this staining.

 

[Craig Sjoquist]

STAIN ..not paint on pressure treated wood

Paint will not last long periods on pressure treated wood if ya do not mind painting every couple years then go ahead.

 

[TammieH]

You will not find a paint that will last 8 years on treated wood...I suggest vinyl sleeves

 

[Edna]

Kood you wrap them with alumium coil stock, like they do window and soffit on houses?

 

[Gino]

Would you ever paint / stain ceder? I want to put up a biz sign for my wife's law biz outside our house. I want something to last a long time. Raw ceder really would not go with the look of the house (English Tudor) in a very rural area, at least that is what I think.

With cedar, I'd prime then paint. I prefer oil based.

sidenote: A trick we used to do years ago was to paint the posts from top to bottom. They always had three finish coats, but we would use actual tar on the bottom 36" which went into the ground. Never had a post rot or eaten up by any kind of bugs.

 

[GP]

Cabot Solid Stain, white.

Educate your customer on the advantages of stain on PT wood.

http://www.cabotstain.com/colors-and-finishes/families/Solids-Colors.html

 

[Tony Teveris]

Thanks - Gino tar is what I was thinking about. On the farm we still have post that have to be 50+ years in the ground still standing.

 

[fresh]

I asked a lumber yard one time about this... They suggested letting the posts dry out for at least a month before putting anything on them. We now try to keep 2 or 4 4x4x10' posts on hand at all times. When we get a job, we just rotate our stock. Honestly, if you're putting up a painted sign, aren't the painted posts going to fade at the same rate as the rest of the sign?

 

[skyhigh]

It's called SOLID color stain for a reason. It's a solid color, not semi-transparent, but it's still a stain. However, if these are permanent I'd use good cedar posts and use primer and oil based paints. Using a roller will work nicely.

When painting any pressure treated posts, plywood or even decking, you need to let the wood breath. Unless it's a good grade 2Xkiln dried, you'll have problems down the road if you use paint. Anyway, around here you do. The old saying if you wanted pressure treated painted... was to let the wood alone for a year and it will go through it's changes and just about dry out. Once it gets that greyish color, you can then paint it with any kind of paint.

The oil based paints will not allow the wood to breathe and this causes checking, warping and peeling of the paint as the pressure treated liquids try to dry. By using oil, they can't do anything, but using a stain... the various wet elements still inside can pass through and dry.

I would never use pressure treated for anything permanent. Unless you're lucky, they just don't look nice after a while. Cedar will look great and weather very well. I've had posts in the ground over 20 years without much problems. The biggest detriment to posts are people with weed-whackers. If cutting is needed right up against, use a small PVC sleeve at the base.

 

[MikeD]

Saw a thread about this a while back that suggested a rigid vinyl sleeve as well. I used to do construction site signs and brushed tar onto the lower 2' and put them in concrete.