Steps for Painting a Factory Finish Metal Facade
Painting a factory finish metal facade is a sensitive painting application. Since you’re starting with an existing coating that has excellent adhesion qualities, when you’re complete, the paint system you applied must also have great adhesion qualities.
Asset preservation and aesthetics are the main reason to paint a building (usually shopping centers) factory finish metal facades and the roof of the pedestrian walkway overhang. The sun’s ultraviolet rays degradate the factory finish metal causing it to color fade, oxidize and lose the mil thickness of the original coating opening up for rust contamination. Of course you’ll be able to see rust on this metal façade which must be addressed, or the corrosion will get worse.
Please keep in mind when you’re watching the video there are both people and lots of cars involved that need to be protected. The wind is also an important factor in this type of coating application. This shopping center is located on the northeast corner of 63rd and Fairview in Westmont. We actually completed the project in 2011 and if you drive by tomorrow, it still looks great.
We start the project by power washing the buildings metal façade using 250° hot water and an environmentally safe/biodegradable cleaning chemical removing any oxidation or other contamination. We then completely hand sanded the metal using a combination of 50 grit and or 120 grit sandpaper depending on the degree of the corrosion. The sanding is done to remove loose paint, rust and mil scale but also to create a surface profile for the new paint to adhere to. After that we re-clean the metal removing all sanding/preparation contamination. McCahill Painting then spots prime all of the areas that had any rust or previous mil scale using an industrial grade rust inhibitive metal primer. This is when we have completed the preparation process.
Now all masking required is completed so that paint overspray doesn’t hit substrates not intended to be painted. Next the building metal façade receives a bonding prime coat followed by two finish coats of a high grade acrylic satin coating. Any color can be used except for we discourage using black or darker colors whenever possible. The building metal façade now looks is good is it does when it was originally installed. Besides looking good, all corrosion has been stopped. That’s a win-win in the painting world.
