Exterior Paint

[pete.wilson]

Hey

I just got finished painting a couple of boxes for the back of my suburban which were made from mostly 1/2" birch virnear plywood (cheap garbage wood) from Home Depot. I sanded the plywood and painted with Valspar Ultra premium exterior semi-gloss latex paint. I have used a 1/4" and 3/8" nap rollers and rolled the paint on, let the first dry and applied a second coat. The problem is the finnish comes out looking like it's textured and not smooth at all. While I don't mind it for this purpose, it would be lousy on the side of the house. Has anyone else run into this problem? Is there something wrong in my application? I wondering if it has to do with paint being so thick these days. Would oil base be better? Hand brush instead of roller? Thanks for the hlp and suggestions.

Pete Wilson

[Dean_A]

For latex paint on non-textured items, I always use foam rollers and get a pretty good finish. I always learned that the nap of the roller should correlate with the texture of the surface you are painting. Therefore no texture=no nap, i.e. a foam roller. I'm not a pro though. I'm sure some folks here might have better info.

[looped]

the foam roller will make it fairly smooth.

another idea would be to roll it on then chase it with a brush. one way to make it smoother would be to make a cup of very thinned paint and dampen the brush with it before smoothing.

[Airspeed]

If you have a big enough compressor you could spray it, My first paint gun was from Harbor freight, it was a HVLP for about $20. You can spray just about anything with it and get a decent finish, certainly better than a roller or brush.
Aaron