Toronto painting blog

This blog is about a renovation on a Toronto home. In this job we worked with Construct Conserve, a prominent eco-conscious general contracting company. This home had a closed concept design where there are a lot of rooms and walls. It would resemble a cramped office. That design approach has fallen off to the more modern approach called open concept. At this site the goal was to make it open concept.

At the start of the video you see a prepped and sealed off area. It is ready for a spray prime application. The window and doors are sealed of with plastic and other pieces of furniture that is not able to be moved is cover with plastic. Work lights are being used for their excellent illumination and also because the pot lights are not installed and there are not always enough lights at this stage in a renovation.

The spray application involves using an airless sprayer. That is a machine that sucks and blows paint through force. Before it expels the paint from the machine the paint is atomized meaning that it is reduced to tiny little particles to produce a spray. When spraying paint you apply it much in the same pattern you would a roller. You will go over some of your last pass from the sprayer in order to insure coverage. Especially when priming you want to back roll. Back rolling is rolling your roller over the sprayed areas. This is done to take extra precautions to adhere the primer to the wall. It causes the paint to be applied with force rather than a misting. It also will give you a rolled wall look. Some people are more apt to this way of a wall looking. A spray finish look more like furniture or cars. A roller look give you a stipple effect or a orange peel look.

Here we are furniture painting.

Generally, the standard for painting most furniture would be to take it off site and have it sprayed. We also had to paint the desk in the room to match the bed frame. When painting the desk we choose to take it to a spray booth and spray it. For the bed we took extra precautions and painted it on site.

The tools that we employ are a Wooster pelican paint container and a European brush. The European brush can also be considered an artist brush. The reason we use an artist brush is because of the intricacy of the detail in the bed frame.

Here we paint all the crevices much like you would when you’re painting a door. Then to give it a smooth finish we use a sponge roller. When using the sponge roller the rules of rolling applications apply. When rolling you want to make your strokes as long as you can. Try not to end half way up a stroke finish at the bottom or the top. Another thing to look out for when rolling is accumulation of paint at the edge of your roller. The worst case is when you will get a large accumulation and causing it to dry with an unsightly textured finished. Painting furniture takes attention to detail and a craftsman like attention to the application of the paint.

One of a long time stereotype is the unreliable contractor or some other unsavory term to put before contractor. Now I’m not going to solve this debate, but I can maybe hope to shed some light on the topic. I can narrow in on costs and misconceptions when it comes to getting a painter. Because painting is a relatively tedious task and does not appear to need to have any true craftsmanship. Now that last sentence is infused with a lot of talking points. The exact topic to zero in on is can anybody paint in comparison to say, being a mechanic? Yes, to a degree, I will admit it the answer is yes. If a layperson went out to fix his car and paint his house and he didn’t know anything of the two, I would bet he might have more success with the paint job. So the technical know-how is less when it comes to painting. Now that’s not saying that you can’t be highly skilled in painting, no, not at all. I raise this point to highlight where a painter might be placed in the skills of life! That bring us to what the value is in a painter. What you are receiving is more than a painter you are receiving a painting service. And this service is more than the sum of the parts.

This reminds me of a story of Picasso where he was warming up and drawing circles on his drawing pad. As quickly as he drew one he had already thrown that one out and on to the next. A well to do man walked by expecting to find himself in quite a jackpot. “My sir can I perhaps have those drawing you have thrown out,” Picasso replied, ”Of course not you dastardly young man. But a price at least for the drawings.” Here this chap was delighted to ponder what measly price he would pay to acquire these drawing. His offer was decidedly declined by Picasso as he proclaimed that the price would be in the millions.

So to be a professional painter there is more than knowing how to paint. There is a whole service aspect to it. If painters can’t keep their business afloat then the service will die. Then we will be left with our family members to do ‘passable’ paint jobs! Wait a minute didn’t Cousin Eddies son just graduate from high school, he has some time on his hands… Darn, let’s pretend I didn’t say that!

Caulking involves filling in gap generally around woodwork and trim. In this example we are discussing caulking from start to finish.

So you find yourself with a closed tube of caulk. Your decision is how big do I want this hole? Stay to the smaller side, unless there is a large area that you need to fill. Even when you need to fill a large hole often the smaller size will be enough, you just have to stay there a little longer to get more caulking out of the gun. After you make your cut then you will poke it with a poker. The tube of caulk has a seal after the tip as well so you have to poke it.

In days of yore the caulking gun didn’t always have a poker. I would always try to have a coat hanger available. It didn’t always matter if you had one though because if needed you could put yourself at the mercy of the customer and ask for a coat hanger. That worked until all the old coat hangers weren’t around, you know all they have now is the fancy plastic ones! Now days the caulking will come equipped with a poker. After poking the tube of caulk clean off your poker and put it back.

In this particular example we are knifing off old paint. This circumstance involves a collection of paint around the trim work. This will happen when the old caulking is removed and as the house settles. The paint accumulates where the trim meets the wall. A sand or knifing will fix this problem. Here we used a knife there is a lot of paint and sanding would have taken to long and potentially damaged the dry wall.

Caulking is certainly an art form. Some people caulk full-time, when any job becomes too big then the production-line mentality will take place. Here in this application the job usually falls to the painter. Your guidelines are not to put to much caulking and don’t leave it too long. In this video we did around 5 feet. Put a small bead of caulk in the space between the baseboard and the wall. Take your time. Then glide your finger or use a tool to spread the caulk evenly between the joint, also have water and a sponge or rag handy in case you put too much and it globs around the end of your finger or tool. In this example, an area was to big to fill with one pass so we’ll go back to it for another application later.

‘Colour shock’ is a term I coined that describes a customers first experience with their freshly painted, newly coloured walls.

These colours will range from bright yellows to deep purples also off-whites coupled with our old standard beige. The perception and or idea of a colour is what ‘colour shock’ addresses.

Elements of observing colour are: Hue is the “essence” of a colour yellow/red or blue. After your essential colour hue then it will vary within intensity, tone and shade. When you have made your choice on paint colour then your next concern will be your paint’s sheen. Sheen is the amount of gloss the paint has and typically your sheen choices are flat, eggshell, satin, semi-gloss and gloss. Occassionally some paint manufacturers will have different names or additional sheen levels but this is the standard list of paint sheen.

Generally a customer reacts to their freshly painted colour in one of three ways; love it, live with it or hate it .. It’s very rare that a colour is hated. It will always fall between love it or live with it, and after that it will more than likely gravitate toward love it after time. Let me explain…

When picking a colour there’s a myriad of avenues to venture down. The short of it is two choices. Colour and sheen. Basic colour theory will help with your choice of what colour. Sheen will depend on what surface you are painting. Picking a colour to paint can take some work. Paint manufacturers present a large choice of paint colours to their customers. So you have selected your colours and have your swatches.

Besides absolutely loving the colour, which of course will be your experience, your initial reaction might vary. Your initial reaction are also subjected to different circumstances. Such as the paint hasn’t dried, it’s only the first coat, it may be dark outside or there is no available natural light. All these situations will play a role in the perception of the paint colour.

When you go into a car show-room to look at cars, are they dinky toy-cars or are they real? Wait before you dismiss me as being around paint a little to long, give me a chance! Unfortunately when picking a paint colour you buy your car by selecting the dinky toy-car. I’m talking about the paint colour samples that are supplied. They are usually pretty small and don’t always accurately represent the final paint colour. Some people will paint small areas with the chosen paint and this is a good idea, although this helps it’s no substitute for painting your place and living with your final paint colour. That way it will be all the more rewarding when you sit down and marvel, beyond all these obstacles you’ve found ‘your paint colour’.