Hey there

I'm currently considering re-painting the exterior of my house and have been getting all excited about colour schemes.

Last weekend I took a few samples of our current paint to be tested for lead by Resene and found that although the current top coat is lead free there is an older coat underneath which contains lead. Now I'm worried about the difficulty of doing the re-painting myself and was after some advice on what other people have done.

Things we are considering are:

- doing everything ourselves i.e. sanding, filling, wood repairs and new paint but means we need gear to handle stripping lead paint
- paying to have the prep work done by people with the right gear to remove lead paint
- paying to have the whole job done i.e. prep and re-paint
- painting over the current top-coat without sanding back but I think this is a bad idea in terms of quality of finish

Anyways any thought and advice on this would be greatly appreciated.


Thanks
Justin