Toronto painting blog

This is an example of an 18 inch roller in action priming a stairwell. This house was under renovation and so we were able to use an airless sprayer to paint nearly everything. Occasionally other trades are present in the house so some areas can not be spray painted at that time. Here we are quickly finishing up the first coat of primer to all areas. Our third and final coat will also applied with an 18 inch roller on this house painting project.

Depending on how the other trades involved in the work are scheduled, we may hold off on doing the final coat of paint until the majority of their work is finished. This is typically because the surface is damaged slightly by the traffic from other trades carrying tools and doing their installations; not to say they are careless but it is quite common that touch-ups are needed before the project is finished.

When looking to paint your house there are many areas to consider.

Your first act is the need or purpose to want to have painting done. After this you then need to know how you will actually get your house painting done. You could DIY it or have somebody do it for you. Other considerations will have to do with what the painting job entails. There various painting experiences and here I’ll discuss four different types of jobs you would most likely encounter when painting houses.

One of the cheapest way is to do it yourself. Well all you have to do is buy the paint and supplies. Then you have to do the job. Learning new things is great ordinarily when you plan on continued investment in the subject. You probably have a career of choice that isn’t house painting if you are considering methods of getting your house painted! To factor in your time is even more detrimental to the plight of the DIY painter!

So you think “I am going to hire somebody”. If you are looking into the public for the advertising most likely you will end up on the internet. Yellow pages, pamphlets and posters is still a form of advertising and they will also generate respectable leads. Regardless of where you find your painters. You will need to feel secure with their personality and also with their skill level as house painters.

The first painting job I’ll discuss is buying a home. When buying a home it may have been painted before for re-sale value. This will hopefully be your paint color choice, yet that rarely happens. But you may be able to salvage some areas. Mainly ceilings, trim work and doors. Those areas are painted fairly standard colours to appeal to a large audience. Your main focus for painting here will be to re-paint walls your color choice.

The second experience may be re-paint. Imagine your son has moved on to college, if you’ve raised him right, he will be inviting you over to his apartment in no time. So why not paint his kitchen that teal blue you love so much. We can all think of the kitchen with the relentless meals its cooked, all the hours of fond memories it has provided and if only the walls could speak. A quick re-paint here with the right crew would take less time than a well planed family dinner!

A milestone in owning a house is renovations. House’s are built within an era. Each era will coincide with a design movement. Within these “movements” interior designs, paint colours and general decor are adopted within housing construction. Presently we are open concept, most renovations have something to do with this transition. Your task will be a little bit larger than a paint job. Incidentally to top off all the final renovation work is the job of the house painter.

Our last consideration is selling the house. It will need a touch up here and there. Your goal is to paint the house in a neutral manner, your providing a blank canvas and showing off your homes potential. Your not going to be the designer for the people moving in! Clean it up and put it on the market.

A crucial advantage in life is when two parties know what each other wants. As simple as this sounds it is extremely beneficial to have this understanding within any business endeavor, especially house painting!

I am amazed how many people don’t know about these big paint rollers. I have seen many people in the industry come to me and ask whats that? To which I reply “You don’t know?” Wow.  However, I totally understand not knowing about them, I have been in paint stores for countless hours and did I ever stumble upon it? No!

One day enjoying a day off  I was walking down the street in the summer and that being summer of course  there was construction not to far away. I then laid my eyes upon this enormous beast of a roller. That just couldn’t be true something like that couldn’t exist.  An image like that never left me and I often wondered about it.  I could not lie to myself no more when my studious partner retrieve reference of this mystical materialistic possession.  I still remember walking to the paint store that day, gathering up the courage, pronouncing that I did not know of this item and do they have it?

What they are is pretty much double sized roller. I mean double the size roller you know of. Yes they do have smaller ones, they get down to 2 to 3 inch. In a painters arsenal rollers are big tools and a great painter would benefit from both large and small rollers. Surely a roller double the size would do double the work? You hit the nail with the hammer this time! So tomorrow when you go to work all the painters you’ll see will have an “18-er” as I like to call them.

Okay, so they are not without their flaws… They do get double the work done, but when do you get ahead in life without a price to pay.  Look at getting a car, you may think “Oh great! I’m going to be able to go to that class across town now!”. True, however make sure you include gas, insurance and maintenance. Likewise with 18″ rollers, they’re darn heavy. Well they are heavier than your standard size but they aren’t double the weight. They can be a little cumbersome but once you have the control, you look around at all the 9″ rollers and realize you’re the jumbo-jet of the lot! It does feel like that!

Coincidentally, just like a jumbo-jet’s gas bill the 18-er (as I like to call them) has a bigger bill. The sleeves can cost double and sometimes triple the price of their small 9″ cousins. Does the carpet match the drapes? In price I guess so! It also take a lot more work to clean them too. You better be a certified painting academy ‘Roller Cleaning Technician’. Forget about cleaning them in your standard sink. If your lucky enough to have a laundry sink then you may have a chance. To dry them off after cleaning it’s worthwhile to have a large garbage bin that you can spin them in (using a good-old roller spinner).  A trick reserved for technicians is to hold open a large garbage bag just right and spin the roller inside the confines, but that’s a two man task.