We just encountered this issue on a client’s house in Toronto, and here’s how we remedied the situation.
The problem:
The last layer of paint was peeling off the walls, leaving the previous layer of paint exposed. This was due to painting latex over top of oil without proper preparation.
Latex paint over oil
The solution:
1. Remove as much of the peeling latex paint as possible. This can be done through scrapping, hand sanding or chemical stripping.
The easiest way, however, is by using our Festool Panex power sander which sands and extracts all dust into a hepa filter vacuum system–sweet!
2. Prime with a primer with excellent adhesion, such as
Advance hybrid primer from Benjamin Moore
Multi Purpose Alkyd primer from Sherwin Williams
Expert emulsion primer from Dulux Paints
3. Top coat with your favourite paint, we like
Aura or Regal from Benjamin Moore
Emerald from Sherwin Williams
Finished product!
There you have it!
To schedule us for a quote please click here to book us online, we serve all of the Greater Toronto Area.
There are many different painters in Toronto, ON and each has a different way of approaching a job, here are a couple of pointers when you are comparing quotes:
Is the painting contractor covered by WSIB and does that painting contractor carry Liability Insurance? A reputable painting contractor’s price will reflect the additional overhead cost of these things.
How detailed is the quote?
Is the level of preparation specified? Things like using a premium primer on exterior wood that is peeling, such as XIM Peel Bond, will make your paint last longer, but will add to the initial cost. Likewise, sanding down glossy areas will promote topcoat adhesion but will require more labour cost than simply painting and hoping.
Is the paint brand and product specified? A painter can say that they use Benjamin Moore, but will they be using top-line Aura or Advance products or will they be using Super Spec which is half the price of Aura. Using lower grade paint will result in a lower cost quote, but it might not give you the end result you’re looking for. The same is true for Sherwin Williams Paints and all the rest, they have their premium products which cost about twice as much as their entry level products.
The most important question is, do you trust the person you are dealing with? Did they come on time for the estimate? Are they professional in their appearance and how they carry themselves? Are they timely at responding to emails and phone calls?
Painting requires attention to detail and if attention to detail is not displayed at the time of the estimate, will it be displayed when the brushes and rollers hit the wall?
If you’d like to have us over for a no-obligation quote feel free to book us online, you just have to choose a time that’s convenient for you.
Wallpaper is a great way to add colour, pattern and texture to a space. But how much wallpaper do you need to order? There are general rules of thumb as to how much coverage you will get from each roll, which I’ll go through here:
First rule is, just because the roll says its 56.4 square feet, don’t think that it will cover 56.4 square feet. With any wallpaper installation there is wasted material that must be accounted for, even with a random match.
Next rule of thumb is, most double rolls of wallpaper will provide 3 full strips on the wall, given a standard 8 ft ceiling. Therefore, if the wallpaper is 20.5” wide, a double roll will provide 61.5” of coverage on the wall.
Lets take an example, say you want to know how many rolls of wallpaper for an accent wall that is 10 ft wide by 8 ft high.
10 ft = 120”
120” divided by 61.5” (coverage per double roll) = 1.95
Therefore 2 double rolls would be needed for the wall
Here are some exceptions:
Some rolls of wallpaper are not 20.5” wide, 27” width is also common. Generally 27” wide wallpaper will still provide 3 strips on the wall, so your coverage would increase to 81” per roll.
Wallpaper with large patterns results in more waste, therefore the repeat of the pattern has to be taken into account when calculating number of rolls needed. Generally we can still get 3 full strips of material out of these rolls, but in rare cases we can’t
Conversely, some wallpaper with no repeat, or a very small repeat can yield 4 full strips of material, in which case less wallpaper is needed.
Windows and door frames should be accounted for as they have the potential to decrease the number of rolls that are needed for the project.
Feel free to contact us and we’ll crunch the numbers for you to ensure that you’re ordering the correct amount of wallpaper for your next wallpaper project.
This is a question I get all the time. Interior paint ranges from flat to eggshell to semi-gloss with some variations in between.
Lower sheen paint shows less imperfections in the surface, but it is less washable than a higher sheen. Higher sheen paint is more scuff resistant and washable, but it tends to show surface imperfections more than a lower sheen.
Therefore, the rule of thumb is lower sheen is used for less touched areas and higher sheen is used for areas that are subject to more wear and tear.
Here are our general recommendations:
Ceilings: Flat in main living areas. Eggshell in kitchens and bathrooms where moisture and cooking would require the added wash-ability.
Walls: A top quality washable flat in lower traffic areas. In higher traffic areas we’d recommend an eggshell.
Trim: Semi-gloss or a pearl. Pearl is one step lower than semi-gloss, so it’s a little less sheen, but still durable enough for trim.
If you’d like a quote on your painting project, along with some product and sheen recommendations book a quote now!
“How do your prices compare to the competition?” Well, let me start off by saying that we will not be the cheapest painter you can get, but what do you get for handing over your hard earned dollars?
First of all you get experience – CAM Painters has been in business in Toronto for close to 15 years, between my painters and myself we have close to 40 years of painting experience under our belt, or on the “dry end of the brush”, as I like to say! Our painters have been selected and trained for attention to detail and excellent customer service.
You get trained painters with the proper equipment to do the job efficiently, safely and to the highest quality standards. We have ladders of all shapes and sizes, from step ladders to 40′ ladders, ladders for safely working in stairwells. We have the fancy Festool dust extraction sanders to keep dust on the jobsite to a minimum.
You get a truck loaded with specialized tools. You get a truck that goes to the paint store for the paint, so that you don’t have to get it yourself.
You get peace of mind by having workers that are fully covered by WSIB, and workers who have been trained to work safe in all situations.
So when you put it all together you get quite a bit of value for your hard earned dollars. You get peace-of-mind that the job will be done efficiently, by trained painters, using the best tools for the job, working safely and fully insured. Why trust your painting experience to anyone else?
If you would like a quote on your painting project in Toronto, why not book one right now?
“How much is this going to cost me?” Whether our customers say it or not, the price of their painting project is a primary concern.
We like to be upfront with our pricing, meaning that the price we give you on our written quote is the price that you pay at the end of the job.
“Is there a situation in which the price on the quote will change?” Fair question, the price on the quote will not change unless there is additional work added to the scope of work, in which case we will give you the additional cost in writing and ask for your approval before going ahead.
Let’s take an example, if you have us price the painting of ceiling and walls in a room, and later decide that the trim should be done, there will be an additional charge for that in writing and we will not proceed with it until you have approved the extra cost.
How do we arrive at the price on our quote? It’s actually rather simple, when I quote a painting project I figure out how long each aspect of the project will take based on setting up, production rates for each task, and clean up afterwards.
I take the total number of hours and multiply it by our hourly charge rate, which is $40/hr (as of summer of 2015) for basic painting services. Material costs are added to the labour cost and that is the price that ends up on the bottom of the quote.
“Can I just pay you $40/hr instead of the fixed price you’ve quoted?” The reason we give fixed prices is for your benefit, it eliminates the risk of not knowing what the final price will be. A fixed price turns your painting project into a stress-free endevour.
We’ve just dealt strictly with pricing here, and we don’t have time to get into the most important aspect, which is “Cost vs. Value” which will be the subject of our next post….
