Painting Stoop Stairs?
I’ve seen a lot of posts saying you shouldn’t paint your stoop stairs but that being said, I see a lot of people do it. Our stoop stairs are in great shape, physically, except the paint is chipping off. We have someone who is going to strip off the old paint and repaint it. Is…
I’ve seen a lot of posts saying you shouldn’t paint your stoop stairs but that being said, I see a lot of people do it. Our stoop stairs are in great shape, physically, except the paint is chipping off. We have someone who is going to strip off the old paint and repaint it. Is this absolutely wrong to do? If not, what paint do people use to paint their stoops? Masonry paint only comes in very light colors and we want to retain the nice dark brown.
Thanks for any advice.
If they are brownstone steps, I would advise against painting. The paint traps moisture inside the brownstone, breaks it down and eventually the stone crumbles to nothing but sand. Sandstone (brownstone) is meant to breathe, absorb moisture and allow it to evaporate again.
We came across this problem about three years ago. We had painted steps that were peeling. First we stripped and repainted with a Farrow-Ball paint specifically for these stairs. The paint was peeling again in under a year.
So, we stripped them, sealed the cracks, joints with a colored mortar/crackfiller, and left them their natural limestone color.
We are so happy we did it. What we did paint, a neutral gray color (as the stairs are gray) is the riser, but not the tread. The tread is where all the paint would peel. This has lasted going on two years, and they still look great. We painted the riser because, after all the different times and all the different colors that the steps had been painted, the riser was stained and we would have had to sandblast to get those colors out…so we painted to have them match the color of the tread.
Let me know if you want to come by and see. breukelyn at mac dot com.
Stairs generally leak. painting and spankling end the leaking.
Most stairs do have a coat of paint on them-painted brownstone.
Thanks for all of the input. I think we’ll have him strip the old stuff off and then see what we have underneath. If it looks good we’ll leave it.
If anyone has other ideas, I’m open!
You might find as I did that there are cement patches under the paint from earlier repairs.
If you’re stripping off the old paint, just leave them. Don’t repaint. Solves your paint/color dilemma, and looks better too.
I think it’s advisable to mix sand, or another ant-slip material into the paint, so the steps aren’t slick in wset weather.
Farrow and Ball make lots of shades of exterior masonry paint. The company is English and they make good quality paint.
http://www.farrow-ball.com/productadvice/AdviceSheets.aspx?language=en-GB
If the steps are brownstone, why not just strip the paint?