My neighbor told me I was painting my fence wrong for 10 years

Old man across the street, Mike, saw me out there with a brush and a can of exterior latex. He said I had to use oil-based primer first or the wood would suck up all the paint and peel in a year. I thought he was full of it. 6 months later I had to strip half the fence and do it over. Cost me $120 extra in supplies and a whole weekend. Anyone else get bad advice from a big box store employee and have to redo a project?

2 comments

2 Comments

matthewgonzalez4d ago

...and that's the thing, people at those stores don't actually know what they're talking about half the time. They just read the label on the can and that's it. You gotta respect the old guys in the neighborhood, they've already made all the mistakes you're about to make. It's like how every "expert" online will tell you to use pressure treated lumber for a deck but then never mention you need special screws or it'll rot from the inside out in five years. Nobody tells you the real stuff because everyone's just repeating what they heard from someone else who didn't know either.

hannah3854d agoTop Commenter

My buddy Jake found this out the hard way last summer. He built this nice looking deck with all pressure treated wood, followed every YouTube tutorial to the letter. Six months later he's pulling up warped boards and finding rusted screw heads all snapped off (they just corroded right through). The old guy next door walked over, took one look, and just laughed. Said he could've saved him 40 hours and a ton of money if Jake had just asked first. That's the thing, you don't know what you don't know until you're already knee deep in it.