Best way to Stage Painting Area for T&G wood strips prior to ceiling installation?
We are going to be installing cypress T&G wood strips to our outdoor ceiling. We have 750 sq feet and would like to seal it prior to installation per recommendations from the installer. What is the best way to stage the painting area since we have so many pieces and such a large area? Multiple saw horses is the only thing I can come up with, but wondered if anyone had other ideas that worked well. They are going to be brushed or rolled. Thanks in advance.
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You do not mention the lengths or widths........
Horses with long 2x4's fastened to the tops (longways, with the horses) has worked for me. Put a block or two on top of those so you can lay another 2x over it so the next level doesn't touch the first. Keep going up till just before the horses break.
I'd paint the backside first-flip-do the top and lay it on the rack-your next 2x will be held up above with blocks.
Stage your paint area up against the drying station so you can easily pull them onto the pile.
The backside wouldn't see a recoat so who cares if the paint is smeared. The top should be uniform so the next and last coat is pristine.
The important parts-the edges of the groove and the tongues.
Lay a couple of sheets of plywood in the grass, spread your boards out on the plywood an ich or so apart and go to it with a roller. In the sun they'll dry before you can finish painting them all. Pick them up and lay the painted ones on the grass and do another load. We do the backs first then the fronts, doesn't take long at all.
The other way to do it is to dip them. Make a trough with plastic sheeting over landscape timbers. Have the plastic come out of the trough on one side 6 feet or so. Under that place several 2x4s (or whatever) propped up on the far end to make a slanting drain tray. Lay lath on the top over the 2x4s to lay the boards on.
Dip a piece, take it out, and set it up on the drain tray. When the tray is getting full transfer the driest pieces to another drying area. Goes real fast.
Of course, works better with a relatively thin stain than thicker paint. You have to evaluate how well it will work with the chosen paint.
Speaking of dips
I used a similar method.
How wide/long are the strips? I recently used a plastic eavestrough section to stain the balusters and infill parts for an outdoor stairway. I started out with a long (8') trough section to stain the longest outside baluster-support pieces, then cut the eavestrough down as the parts got smaller and smaller. I glued one endpiece on and sealed the other endpiece with some plastic sheeting. Worked like a charm. For drying, I placed the balusters vertically against a concrete wall with plastic sheet underneath. For the first few minutes of drying, I used a paint roller pan to collect and recycle the stain dripping down. Obviously, this only works if the strips are narrow enough to fit at least half-way into the depth of stain in the trough.
I'm assuming you are using a stain of some sort?
Anyway, I don't want t&g pine out in the sun since most of it isn't the best wood and warps and twists all over the place, maybe the wood you're using is much more stable.
I've run miles of it and almost always we have a guy sanding and finishing as we're installing so there's not a big need for storage. After it's stained it sits for at least day or so....mostly dry but slightly oily so it helps installation.
T&G must be the worst possible material when it's fully dry - nothing straight, flat, the same width, or anything else! lol
We build 4 foot wide ladders, 2x4 uprights with 1x slats placed about 10"-16". The uprights are often tacked to joists in the basement running floor to ceiling or otherwise braced to each other, spaced roughly 8' apart, depending on the average length of your pieces. Set up some saw horses with a plank to use as a work bench, apply the finish then slide the work on the ladders to dry. Do only one side at a time, backside first if you are doing both faces. Load the top rungs first so you don't accidentally drip or knock dust on the previous bunch.
If you have a rough-framed area, just drive long screws every 2-4 inches into every other stud across a wall area that's wide enough for the boards.
(In a house down in Iowa a couple of years back, where we were doing flood recovery work, we needed to dry some short trim boards and ended up driving screws into the trimmers of the unfinished bathroom door opening -- it was the only place sufficiently out of the way with exposed framing. Started up high, and people had to do the limbo to get into the bathroom.)