What Should You Check on Your House Exterior Before Winter?

Before winter, walk around your house and check four things: peeling or blistering paint, cracked caulk around windows and doors, soft or dark wood on sills and trim, and gutters that spill onto siding. Each one is a place water gets in, freezes, and expands. Catching them in fall keeps a small fix small.

All you need is a screwdriver and a slow lap around the house. Here’s what we’d look at if it were ours.

Why does fall matter so much for your exterior?

Kansas City winters freeze and thaw over and over. Water gets into a crack or under a loose edge of paint, freezes overnight, and expands. Then it thaws, soaks in deeper, and does it again the next cold night.

Paint is the barrier that keeps that water out of the wood. Where it’s intact, the wood underneath stays dry. Where it’s open, every freeze-thaw cycle widens the gap a little more. A spot you could cover with your hand in October can be a much bigger repair by spring.

What should you look for in your paint?

Start on the side of the house that takes the most sun and weather, since it usually fails first. Look for:

• Paint lifting, curling, or flaking off in sheets
• Blisters or bubbles, which often mean moisture is getting behind the paint
• Bare wood showing through anywhere
• Chalky residue that rubs off on your hand

Here’s the part people get wrong. Not every flake means the whole house needs stripping. Well-bonded paint can stay right where it is. What matters is the failed areas, where paint has let go and wood is exposed. On our jobs, those spots get scraped back to a sound surface and feathered so the repair doesn’t show through the new coat. If you want the longer version of why paint lets go, we wrote about why paint peels and the real fix.

Is your caulk still sealing?

Caulk does a lot of quiet work, which is why we use the most expensive caulk Sherwin-Williams offers. Check every joint where two materials meet: around window and door frames, where trim meets siding, and at the corners.

You’re looking for caulk that has cracked, shrunk away from one side, or gone missing. Any gap you can slide a fingernail into is a gap water can find. Fresh caulk in those joints before the cold sets in is one of the easiest wins on this list.

Do you have any soft or rotting wood?

Grab the screwdriver. Press the tip into any wood that looks dark, cracked along the grain, or swollen. Sound wood resists. Soft wood lets the tip sink in.

Check window sills first, since they’re flat and catch everything running down the glass. Then the bottom of door frames, fascia boards behind the gutters, and the lower ends of trim boards.

Soft wood can’t hold paint, so it has to be repaired or replaced before anything goes on it. It’s also worth asking how the water got there. Sometimes the cause is obvious, like a failed caulk joint or a gutter dumping onto one board. Sometimes it isn’t, and nobody can promise to find it every time. Where the source can be found, it should get fixed along with the wood.

Are your gutters dumping water on the house?

Clogged gutters overflow, and the water runs straight down the fascia and siding. That’s a common reason one stretch of trim fails while the rest of the house looks fine.

Clear them after the leaves come down, and make sure the downspouts carry water away from the foundation instead of soaking the bottom of your siding.

What can wait until spring, and what can’t?

Faded color, a scuffed door, and small spots of chipping on a sound surface can usually wait. Those are cosmetic.

Bare wood, open caulk joints, and soft spots are the ones we’d deal with before the hard freezes. The good news is there’s more time than most people think. Our exterior season runs roughly March into December, and quality Sherwin-Williams exterior products are rated down to 35 degrees surface temperature. We can work in that range, though we usually choose not to push that close to it. We covered the details in how late you can paint an exterior in Kansas City.

One more thing about fall painting. Cool, damp weeks mean siding takes longer to dry after rain or a wash. We often powerwash, let the house dry for a day or two, and then come back to prep. Wood that feels dry on the surface can still hold water underneath, and paint over damp wood fails early.

Want a second set of eyes?

If your walk-around turned up a few things you’re not sure about, a free estimate is an easy way to sort out what needs attention now and what can wait. Our exterior painting uses Sherwin-Williams products and comes with a 5-year written warranty, and there’s no deposit. You pay nothing until the job is complete.

Book a time at catalystpainters.com/schedule.