by Craig | Apr 2, 2023 | Exterior Painting, General posts
Warmer weather means that snow melts and moisture accumulates, so it’s a good practice to inspect the outside of your home. This ensure you can catch little problems before they become big ones.
As you walk around the outside of your home pay attention to these areas:
Wooden window sills – snow and water can accumulate on these, so they are usually the first place where paint starts to peel
Decks and railings – snow and rain can accumulate on these areas as well so they generally need a lot of maintenance
Foundations – look for any cracks in your foundation, when snow melts and water expands it can cause hairline cracks to get worse
Shady areas and areas of low ventilation – these are prime areas of mold and mildew growth
Eaves and downspouts – if ice has formed in these over the winter, as the ice thaws it expands and can damage both eaves and downspouts
The exterior painting season at CAM Painters
As the temperature rises we often think about all the outside projects we have to do, and painting is usually one of them. Well, at CAM Painters we’re gearing up for the exterior painting season, BUT we can’t rush things…
Why? Most surfaces need time to thoroughly dry after the spring thaw, and this can take a few weeks. Wooden surfaces especially can hold on to moisture for weeks!
2 things we look for before starting exterior painting:
Temperatures stay above 5C at night
Moisture content is at an appropriate level (for wood this means less than 15%)
This usually means that we don’t start exterior painting until mid May and we stop exterior painting usually in late September. This only gives us 4 and a half months of exterior painting, and then we have to deal with rain delays too!
So the prudent thing to do is, if you’re thinking of doing some exterior painting this year, now is the time to get an estimate and book the work in!
by Craig | Sep 14, 2016 | Exterior Painting, Interior Painting
Most people value quick and efficient service. Their oil is changed in 15 minutes, their pizza is at their door within 30 minutes. Can the same thing be applied to painting services? Let’s find out…
What can be accomplished in a day of painting?
There are many new products coming out with shorter dry times, which allow us to complete more of your project in a shorter time. I’ll give a few examples:
Quick dry caulking: This particular product can be painted within a half hour versus over an hour with most other types of caulk.
READ: How-To: Get a Straight Line of Caulking
Sheetrock 5 or EasySand 5: These are powder based patching compounds which are designed to be fast drying. In fact, as long as a patch is fairly shallow it can be sanded within an hour. This allows us to do multiple skim coats on a patch in one day. Previously the quickest drying powder was Sheetrock 20, where a skim coat would generally take a half day to dry.
Quick dry primers: Many times we’ll use quick dry primers that can be top coated within 30 min to an hour. This gives us the ability to prime and paint in the same day.
However, we transform your home with lasting beauty, and sometimes it takes a little more time to achieve a lasting result. So, what are the circumstances that would prevent painting from being done in one day?
High level of prep needed before painting.
We work on many older homes in the city and it’s very common to see cracks in plaster walls, deep holes, and other damage.
Some painters looking to quickly finish the job will just skim over cracks in plaster, however, this is only a temporary cosmetic solution. The crack is still lurking underneath the quick fix and it generally shows through the surface again, not long after the work has been completed.
In order to properly correct these fault lines in your walls, they must be dug out and widened before a thick layer of plaster compound is put in to stabilize the crack.
Whenever a thick layer of plaster compound is applied it generally needs to be left until the next day before it is dry enough to sand.
Likewise, when dealing with deep holes or other damage we have to wait for the plaster compound to dry, which generally means leaving it to the next day.
Also, when dealing with drywall walls, damaged seams generally take over a day to fix when the dry time is factored in.
Painting in humid areas and other factors that affect drying time.
In the summer, if there is a lot of humidity in the air the paint won’t dry as quickly and extra time will have to be factored in. This additional time can be reduced by running the air conditioning or a dehumidifier. If you do not have an air conditioner within the home, you may want to see about having an installation done by taking a look at company websites such as aqualityhvac.org/air-conditioning/ac-installation/ for guidance.
In the winter some exterior walls can be very cold, especially in older Toronto homes with poor insulation. These cold walls can greatly slow down the drying of both plaster compound and paint.
What can be done to speed drying times when painting?
Many times if plaster or paint is taking a long time to dry a painter will use a fan, heater, hair dryer or even a heat gun to speed the drying process. Whilst heat guns, that you can get from places like Pro-Tect Plastics (https://shrinkwrapcontainments.com/p-34-shrinkfast-998-ul-heat-gun-kit.aspx) can be particularly useful, ensuring that you use them properly, as well as controlling the temperature will be crucial in the success of the drying process. These techniques are fine, and we use some of these methods from time to time, but with caution. If dry time is accelerated too much what happens is that the top layer of either patch or paint dries, but underneath is still wet. The wet patch or paint will actually cause cracking and blistering in the future because the surface underneath is unstable.
READ: How I Ensure That You Have A Great Painting Experience
So, in conclusion, CAM Painters can get a lot of painting done in a day, but there are many situations where we will need to give patching compound, primer or paint adequate time to dry so that it provides a sound, durable paint system for you, our valued client. In these situations, we prefer to do things right, rather than do things quickly.
So why don’t you book a quote? CAM Painters will Transform your home with lasting beauty!
