Painting Pressure Treated lumber

[Clarence Martin]

How long after you have installed Pressure Treated lumber for a Deck or Porch steps , do you have to wait before you can paint it ? Got the job done a few days agao, and would like to lay carpet down on the porch from the edge of the door straight down the steps. I need to paint the porch , so I was thinking of waiting a couple of weeks , then paint, then put the carpet down. Some have said the paint will peel. If that happens, Couldn't I just repaint in the Spring ?

[Rich Engelhardt]

@ this point, I'd hold off until Spring.
The days are just too short and cool for the PT to dry out enough.

I know the older stuff was real unforgiving about being painted too soon.
When I sold paint some 25 years ago, we used to recommend a minimum of 6 months for PT to weather before painting or staining it.

W/the proliferation of recent "overcoat" products for ugly decks, I suspect the newer stuff is just as bad, if not worse.

We'll see.
I just replaced some sections of PT deck and used some of the Behr Deckover on both the old work and the newly installed & dripping wet PT steps and a few boards.
I'm curious to see if & when it fails.

[Steve Schoene]

This depends on how wet the pressure treated lumber was when you used it. For a premium you could have used lumber kiln dried after treating. That would be almost immediately ready to paint. But the typical pressure treated lumber can have moisture content that is quite high. If you try to paint that the paint will fail. Naturally, the perversity of nature being what it is, it will not just evenly peel off, you will still have large amounts of work to get the wood ready to repaint. Patience is a virtue.

[Fred Belknap]

I usually use a stain finish on new PT lumber. Green PT lumber will shrink and twist, putting a finish on it will help but won't stop all of it. I know this goes against normal procedure but it has worked for me. I see no advantage to wait till it twists and shrinks before finishing.

[Von Bickley]

Sprinkle some water on it.... If the water beads up, it is still too wet. If the wood absorbs the water, it ready to paint.