Our painter used an oil exterior paint to on (new) cedar framing trim around the new windows we had installed to replace our old ones. The paint began to mildew within a few weeks and remains a real problem. My husband has climbed up to each window and bleached the mildew on two occasions while we continue to press the painter to return and recify the problem. He painted all of the new siding with an exterior latex paint which has no mildew problems while all of the new trim installed is covered with mildew. He used oil paint which he thinned with gasoline when he ran out of paint thinner (I know because I saw him mixing it). Is it truly necessary to thin all oil paint for exterior application???? Could this have caused the problem? Or, should he have primed the cedar trim (which he insisted he did not have to do because he was applying two coats of the oil paint)? It was not an inexpensive job as we had him do much of the rest of the work. Everything else he has done has been A+++, and we have had many happy friends who were given his name for work. I want to know if it is our problem for insisting he use oil based paint or if it is the way in which he applied it, or thinned it, that is the problem. Also, it was Behr and some have suggested that is one of the problems also.

Myhmrepr