Painting exterior windows and window sills?

Naturally when the weather turns good as now, the push to get outside maintenance done 'hots up'. With the trend to give wooden or wooden effect interior kitchens and furniture a new look - and lease of life - with solid colours, it's no surprise we were asked for paint to change outside mahogany varnished wooden windows to a light pastel shade with the window sills to be painted in the same colour.

In this case the lady intended to complete the job herself, but still wanted a good quality long lasting solution. Firstly, we suggested she could sand her windows to remove as much of the varnish as possible - time consuming and hard work, but with cost savings on a special primer - it was easy to see this method was not that appealing to her.

We considered our conventional method, use a Zinsser B.I.N on the varnished wood and either Zinsser Bulls Eye 123 or other alkali resisting primer on her window sills, then two coats of gloss or exterior satin depending on the required finish. We would normally suggest oil based but we thought a water based coating such as Crown Trade Fastflow gloss or satin as a decent alternative especially if the customer wants an easy clean up.

The prospect of having to use two separate primers and then a top coat seemed a bit daunting for a non professional and also looked like a pricey option.

It just so happened the week before a painter had asked us to order in Zinsser Allcoat Exterior gloss for him - this was a paint we had little previous experience of retailing or specifying.

We took some time to read up on its capabilities -:

• Excellent colour retention
  
• Weather resistant
  
• Multi-surface application
  
• Normally no separate primer required
  
• Flexible film
  
• Fast recoat time - 1 hour, water based version.

The fact that this paint can also be tinted to any RAL, NCS of BS4800 colours and comes in matt, satin, or gloss finish persuaded us to suggest this as a suitable cost effective, time reducing and simpler solution.

The lady was impressed with the suggestion and now has the perfect windows and sills that she had originally wanted. 

If you have used Zinsser AllCoat in the past we would be happy to hear of your experience and how you rate it.