Painting screens are fun! I did this one this past summer. I actually painted the frame blue after I took the picture and this screen hung on the side of the shed this summer. I also have two Americana flag screens...one on the porch and one in our bathroom. Those are made out of the expandable screens. They make cheap wall decor and are really pretty simple to make! I used regular old craft paint and just went to town. Try not to get too much paint on your brush or you get a lot of holes filled with paint. It's best if you don't let the paint filling the holes bother you too much, though. If you're looking for perfection, you'll just end up frustrated! Hope the class is a good one! Here is a link that might be useful: Painted screen

Two reasons not to paint your vinyl that I can think of: one, you are taking a maintenance free item and turning it into something you need to maintain. Second, painting vinyl is hard...because of the nature of the surface, it's easy to put brush marks all over it and make it look like crap if you don't know what you are doing. Also, yes it's true for any of those home improvement shows that they make the transformations look easy but will look like crap in a few months because of all the steps they skipped. If you want to learn to do things the 'right way' you will not learn that from watching those shows, especially when it comes to painting.

I'm not with the BBB either, and I'm fantastic. Also, not all states require painters to be licensed. Cleaning stucco with primer huh? Yeah, that's a lie. It may be true that actually painting a surface will incorporate the surface dirt onto the roller so that it may not affect adhesion, but I certainly would not call that 'cleaning'. However, cleaning stucco with a power washer can be risky business, especially if the house is old and there may be ways for water to actually get inside the house. There may also be the possibility of knocking some stucco off with the force of the water. I understand that it may not be worth the trouble to actually call the painter back to remove paint from the screens, even though he should. What you can do is dip a rag in denatured alcohol or just regular rubbing alcohol and rub it lightly on the screens. Don't give up too quickly as it takes some time for the alcohol to saturate the paint and then it comes off easily.

Paint, screen, then touch up. They will probably get a little dinged up.