Iron and Metal Coatings

What Is Actually Under Your Railing Paint

A guardrail that looks tired from the sidewalk is rarely tired. It is usually two or three coats of paint sitting on a layer of corrosion that lifted the first coat off years ago. You can find out in ten seconds with a stiff scraper. If the film comes away in a sheet and the underside is brown, the paint has not been attached to the steel for a long time and no new color is going to fix that.

We work on welded steel guardrails, wrought iron balcony rails, stair stringers and treads, post bases set into concrete or stucco, and the metal brackets and lintels that stain a wall from above. Most of it is on apartment buildings and condos built between the 1920s and the 1970s, which is a large share of the housing stock here, and much of it has been repainted several times without preparation.

The Preparation Is the Service

Removal comes first. Loose scale, flaking film and rust come off by hand and power tool until what is left is sound. Where the pitting is deep we feather the surrounding coating so the new film has a taper to key into instead of a hard shelf that will crack along its edge in the first winter. Where a section of rail is still solidly coated and well adhered, we leave it, scuff it and spot prime, because stripping sound coating for the sake of it costs you money and buys nothing.

Then the wash. This is the step that separates coastal work from inland work. Chloride from ocean air sits invisibly on the metal and it does not come off with a dry brush. It is washed off, and the surface is allowed to dry properly before anything is applied. Priming over salt seals the corrosion cell inside the coating, where it carries on working in the dark.

Primer Chosen for the Metal, Not the Habit

Bare steel takes a rust inhibitive primer, waterborne or solvent depending on the exposure and whether the building is occupied. Hot dip galvanized takes a bonding primer formulated for zinc, never a straight alkyd, because alkyd binders react with the zinc surface and saponify at the interface. That is what causes those sheets of paint to slide off a railing that is only a few years old. Powder coated aluminum needs a wash, an abrade and an adhesion promoting primer. Previously coated iron in decent condition takes a spot prime and a compatible topcoat.

Finish is typically a direct to metal acrylic for residential railings, which holds gloss and color against the UV load on south and west elevations far better than the enamels people remember, and lets us work around residents without solvent odor through the units. Where corrosion has been severe or the element takes standing water, an epoxy primer with a urethane topcoat is the honest recommendation and we will say so.

Working Around the Building

Coating goes on when the surface is genuinely ready. Applied product wants a surface temperature comfortably above the dew point, and Santa Monica mornings under the marine layer often are not. We prep in the morning and coat in the afternoon window, and if that window does not open we come back. Grinding and scraping is contained so chips do not end up on the neighbor’s car or in a planter, and on pre-1978 buildings we treat the existing coating as potentially lead bearing and use wet methods and containment rather than dry sanding it open.

Call (424) 587-8615 and we will come and put a scraper into a few spots before anyone quotes you a number.