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FEATURE
Thoughts on
painting the
porch railing
Fred H. Olin, MD
Our front porch railing needed painting. We had had to re- took the job of making it look good again. My first mistake was
place it 10 or 15 years ago because the original had been con- waiting until the rainiest August in 102 years. I got the loose
structed of untreated wood and had rotted out. The new one paint scraped off fairly efficiently, and then the rains came. My
was made of pressure-treated lumber, which was fine, but it was next chore was to sand the remaining paint and bare wood to
then painted before the wood treatment had completely dried. a reasonable smoothness and get ready to paint. This left me
Over the years the paint flaked off and it got so ugly I decided with some really bad looking railings, balusters and balustrades
to repaint it. That way I knew it would be done correctly. (yes, I had to look up what the various parts of the railing were
called.) There were visible margins where the bare wood met
My stepfather, Paul W. Berg (1914-1980), was a house the paint that had stayed stuck. I didn’t want to sand it down
painter…but that understates reality. He was a master at the all the way to bare wood: it would have removed too much ma-
trade back when there were no spectrophotometers in every terial. Additionally, there were cracks in the wood where the
paint store and big-box hardware emporium to help you dupli- grain had split a bit and miscellaneous dents and places splin-
cate the color of your grandmother’s favorite shawl. He did it ters had broken off. Here’s a picture of how the wood looked
with linseed-oil-based paint, concentrated colors in oil and an as I got ready to paint it.
amazing eye. He taught me how to paint and even (sort of )
hang wallpaper. Here’s a direct quote: “Anyone can slap paint OK, here come the unsolicited testimonials: First came choos-
on a wall but it takes a painter to get ready to paint.” And ing paint, and thank goodness for the internet. It turns out that
therein lies the story of my porch railing. Sherwin-Williams has a product designed to make deteriorating
wood siding look good again. It’s primer and acrylic paint all in
It was a mess. There were paint flakes all over the porch and one, it’s called “Rejuvenate,” and it does what they says it does:
more was hanging on, flapping in the breeze and looking just sort of levels out irregularities, small cracks and divots, and gives
plain ugly. Some paint, however, had adhered well and wasn’t what they call a “low-sheen” finish (that’s PR for “flat”). At the
going anywhere. So, after a year or two of contemplation, med- top of page 29 you can see how it looked before and after I started.
itation, consideration, procrastination and planning, I under-
28 San Antonio Medicine • December 2016
