Our cute little farm pasture fences are looking not their best after this winter. We have 3 rail wood fencing with hot wire along the top rail, surrounding about 3 acres (with a smaller paddock in there).
What’s the best way to repaint this much fence, if we do it ourselves? We are also open to hiring someone/a company - what would something like that cost?
I hate how shabby it looks and know it’s not great for the wood. Any advice welcome!
I have 3 board fence at my farm. It was white but last year we painted all the fences black. It was quite the project and required a decent amount of prep work to remove the flaked and loose white paint.
We used Lexington Paint Company’s acrylic fence paint. I talked to the people at the paint company and got their recommendation on which paint to use. They were quite helpful and really know their products. I highly recommend them for fence paint.
I sprayed my fence last year. If there’s existing paint, you’ll probably want to pressure wash or wire brush?
It was a big project but certainly not insurmountable. Buy or rent an airless paint sprayer. We also used paint from Lexington paint company–definitely recommend it. Give them a call, they’re very helpful over the phone.
We also have oak 3 board fencing that we paint black with Lexington paint. We have used it for years and do re spray our fencing every 3 or 4 years. We also use a paint sprayer and we put a generator on a skid and I drive our tractor really slowly about 10ft away from the fencing (on a non windy day!) and my husband sprays the fence. The hose is about 50 ft so I never have to get too close in case of overspray.
We have hundreds and hundreds of feet of fencing, so it is a big job but looks amazing afterwards.
This is our method too. That said, it’s not that horrible of a job to just do it by hand. Put some thought into efficiency-- have all of your supplies in a cart that you can easily pull down the fenceline as your work, and keep your paint bucket at a comfortable height so you don’t have to bend down every time you need to refill your brush. And as a side bonus, your arms will get super muscular! 
No matter what, pressure wash them first, for sure, or all that work (and $$$) painting will just have to be repeated in a year or two when it starts flaking off.
Tip: When painting, it’s easy to get in the habit of trying to get all the paint off your brush before going back to your paint can / tray to reload the brush. Dry-brushing like that is a lot of wasted effort, so try to remind yourself to refill your brush often, so you’re not going over the same spot with the brush more than twice. 1st pass apply, 2nd pass smooth, then move on.
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