How to Paint a Raised or Elevated New Orleans Home

If you have priced an exterior repaint on a raised house and the number surprised you, the extra was almost certainly not the paint. It was the access, the underside, and the skirting, and those three things turn a straightforward repaint into a different kind of project.

Raised houses are ordinary here and unusual almost everywhere else. That means a lot of general painting advice, and a fair number of crews, are quietly assuming a house whose walls meet the ground. On a home standing on piers, the assumptions break in specific places.

At Big Easy Painting, elevated homes are routine work rather than an exception, and the sequence below is how we approach them. It is written so you can judge a quote against it, even if you never pick up a brush.

If you are planning work on a raised property and want it scoped properly, contact us for a free quote.

The industry standard is to paint on a surface whose temperature is more than 5 degrees Fahrenheit above the dew point, the temperature at which water droplets begin to condense. On a raised house, the underside is the last surface to satisfy that rule on any given day, and it is the one most often coated before it does.

Why Does a Raised House Take Longer to Paint Than a Slab House?

The wall area is not dramatically different. The number of distinct surfaces, and the difficulty of reaching them, is.

A house on piers introduces work that simply does not exist on a slab-built property, and each of those surfaces sits in the dampest, least ventilated part of the site. They are also the surfaces nobody looks at, which is exactly why they are the ones a rushed quote leaves out.

The three surfaces a slab house does not have

The piers carry the house and are usually masonry, brick, or concrete, each taking coatings differently from siding. The underside, meaning joists, beams, and subfloor framing, is overhead work in a confined space. The skirting or lattice closes the gap between the floor level and the ground, and it is the element most likely to be damaged, rotted, or previously repaired badly.

Add the height of the walls above, which frequently puts the upper courses beyond a standard ladder position, and you have four access problems on one building.

Step 1: Survey the Access Before Anything Else

Walk the full perimeter and establish, honestly, how you are going to reach every surface. This is the step that decides the cost and the schedule, and it is the one most often skipped.

• Crawl height under the house. Enough clearance to work upright is a different job from a space you can only enter on your back.
• Ground condition around the piers. Soft, wet, or uneven ground limits what can be set up safely.
• Ladder and scaffold footings. A raised house needs stable footing for equipment that is already starting higher up.
• Obstructions. Utility runs, meters, condenser units, and mature planting all narrow the working space.
• The far side. There is usually one elevation with a fence, a neighbor, or a slope that makes it the hardest, and it should be priced before work starts rather than discovered.

Any quote that has not involved someone actually going under the house has not priced the job.

Step 2: Deal With What Lives Under the House

Before any washing, the space has to be made workable. Under a raised house in this climate that means wildlife, insects, and debris.

Wasp and hornet nests are common in joist bays and behind skirting. Spiders are a given. Standing water, leaf litter, and years of accumulated material tend to sit against the piers, and rodents may have been using the space.

Clear it, and note anything that is a building problem rather than a painting one. A joist with soft rot, a pier with movement, a duct hanging loose, or persistent standing water are all findings the owner needs before the coating decision, not after it.

This step is worth insisting on for a reason beyond paint. The underside of a raised house is the part of the building almost nobody inspects, so it is where problems get to run for years unobserved. A painting crew that is about to spend a day under there is the best opportunity you will get to find out what is happening beneath your floor.

Photograph anything questionable while the space is clear and lit. Owners frequently discover that what they assumed was a painting job includes a carpentry item, and having it documented before work begins keeps that conversation straightforward rather than adversarial.

Step 3: Wash and Let the Underside Actually Dry

Wash the whole envelope, including the piers, the underside framing, and both faces of the skirting. Salt, mildew, and dirt all sit heaviest in the parts that never get direct sun.

Then wait, and wait longer than feels necessary. The underside of a raised house is shaded all day and sits in the most humid air on the property, so it is the slowest surface anywhere on the building to dry. Coating it while the timber is still carrying water is how the underside fails first, which is precisely the pattern we are usually called to fix.

The trap is that the underside looks dry long before it is. Rough framing feels dry to the hand while the timber below the surface is still holding water from the wash, and there is no sun or moving air down there to finish the job. A moisture reading is worth more than an opinion here, and on a wet week the honest answer is that the underside is not ready yet.

Airflow helps more than waiting alone. Clearing the skirting vents, moving stored items away from the piers, and giving the space a way to exchange air will shorten the interval more reliably than simply adding days to it.

Our pressure washing service is scheduled with that drying interval built into the schedule rather than compressed into the same visit, because on this house type the interval is doing more work than on any other.

Step 4: Repair the Skirting and Lattice Before You Coat It

Skirting takes more damage than any other exterior element on a raised house. It sits at ground level, it gets kicked, flooded, and pushed against by planting, and it is often the part of the house most recently patched by somebody in a hurry.

It is also the element most likely to be a mix of materials by now. A run of original lattice, a replaced panel in a different timber, and a section of board someone fitted after a storm will all take coatings differently and will not weather at the same rate. Recognizing that before coating is what stops a freshly painted skirting looking patchy within a year.

• Replace rotted sections rather than coating them. Paint over soft timber buys a season at most.
• Check the fixings. Corroded fasteners in a damp location will fail regardless of the finish over them.
• Confirm the ventilation. Skirting is meant to allow airflow under the house. Sealing it up to look tidy creates a moisture problem that will find your paint.
• Prime bare and repaired areas before the finish coats, so the repairs do not read through as patches.

Step 5: Paint the Underside and Piers First

Work from the bottom up and from the inside out, so overspray, drips, and dust land on surfaces you have not finished yet rather than on ones you have.

The underside is overhead work in a restricted space, and it is slow. Expect it to take a disproportionate share of the labor relative to its square footage, because everything about it is harder: reaching it, seeing it, and getting an even film onto framing that was never milled to be a finished surface.

Piers usually need a masonry-appropriate system rather than the coating going on the siding, which means a separate product and often a separate day. Brick, block, and poured concrete each behave differently, and a coating that traps moisture in masonry sitting in damp ground will fail regardless of how well it was applied.

This ordering also gives the underside the longest possible time to cure before anything else touches it, which matters because it is the surface with the least favorable drying conditions on the entire building.

There is a practical reason to resist the temptation to skip straight to the walls. The walls are what the owner sees, so they are what a crew under time pressure prioritizes, and the underside then gets whatever hours are left at the end. Doing it first protects it from being the part that gets compressed.

Step 6: Work Down the Elevations and Finish at Ground Level

With the underside complete, move to the walls, following shade around the building so no elevation is coated at its hottest, and sequencing so the last application of each day has time to set before evening moisture arrives.

On a raised house the upper courses deserve particular attention, because they are further from the ground than on a comparable slab property and are therefore the most likely to be reached awkwardly. Work reached at full ladder extension tends to be thinner and less consistent than work reached comfortably, and that shows up years later as an upper band that fails before the rest.

Trim, soffits, and any porch or gallery structure are usually part of this stage too. Raised homes in this city frequently carry a front gallery with its own columns, railings, and ceiling, and that is effectively a second small building with its own access requirements.

Finish at the skirting and the ground line. Leaving it last keeps the most easily damaged, most easily splashed element out of the traffic of the rest of the job, and it means the final pass is on the part of the house a visitor sees from the street. Our exterior home painting service runs raised properties in this order as standard.

Work With Painters Who Have Done Raised Homes Here

A raised house is not a harder version of a normal repaint. It is a repaint plus three surfaces that need their own access, their own preparation, and in the case of the piers their own coating system. The quotes you receive will differ mostly on whether they have accounted for that.

Ask two questions of anyone bidding: did they go under the house, and in what order will they paint it. An answer that starts at the underside and finishes at the skirting is from someone who has done this before. An answer that treats the house as walls and trim has priced a different building.

A third question is worth adding if the quotes are far apart. Ask what is included beneath the floor line, specifically the framing, the piers, and both faces of the skirting. That is usually where the gap between a low bid and a complete one is hiding, and it is not visible in a total.

It is also the part of the house you will not easily inspect afterwards. Walls can be checked from the yard, but almost nobody crawls under to confirm the joists were coated, which is exactly why it is worth agreeing in writing beforehand rather than trusting to goodwill.

We work on elevated homes throughout the metro and the surrounding parishes, listed on our service areas page. To have a raised property looked at and scoped properly, Big Easy Painting will quote it at no charge. Call us today at (504) 608-2155.

Frequently Asked Questions About Painting a Raised Home

Does the underside of a raised house really need painting?

Coating the exposed framing protects it from the most humid air on the property and makes moisture problems easier to spot early. It is not purely cosmetic, and skipping it is one of the more common false economies on this house type.

How much more does a raised home cost to paint?

There is no fixed uplift, because it depends on crawl height, ground conditions, the state of the skirting, and how reachable the upper walls are. Those variables are why an on-site survey is worth insisting on rather than accepting a figure over the phone.

Can the piers be painted the same as the siding?

Usually not. Masonry, brick, and concrete need a system suited to those substrates and to a location that stays damp, which normally means a different product from the one going on the walls above.

Should skirting be sealed up to keep animals out?

No, not by closing off the airflow. Skirting is meant to ventilate the space beneath the house, and blocking it traps moisture that will damage both the framing and any coating on it. Exclusion should be done in a way that preserves ventilation.

How long does a raised house repaint take?

Longer than an equivalent slab house, mainly because of access and because the underside needs genuine drying time before and after coating. A schedule that does not allow for those waits is likely to produce an underside that fails first.