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From time to time, we get asked a question that shows how thoughtful our clientele can be. One such question is do you caulk or prime first. This is a great question to ask your painter! Not only do we have an answer, but we have an explanation and are happy to tell you all about it. In fact, there are a few different ways to approach this question. First, is the siding and trim painted or is it raw wood or other substrate. Second, what kind of caulk are we using on the project. The assumption we will make here are that the wood or siding is bare and the caulk is a premium grade urethanized acrylic.

The short answer is that we prime and then caulk. No matter the gap size, the job that is asked of caulk is not easy task – to expand and contract at all the wrong moments. So, let’s say it is 110 degrees outside. This pushes the gap together as the substrate expand with heat and the caulk compresses. So far, not too difficult! But take the winter months, the bulk is cold and more rigid at the same point the substrate is shrinking and stretching the caulk. Okay, don’t stress out! This is what caulk is designed to do. So why is is so important to prime first. It has to do with the grip of the adhesion. Caulk stick to primed wood quite a bit better than bare wood. So as the tension build to pull the caulk away from the wood and then back to pushing it into the wood, your caulk has a good and compatible surface to adhere to. This gives your caulk a better chance of sticking to it.

The short answer is that we prime and then caulk. No matter the gap size, the job that is asked of caulk is not easy task – to expand and contract at all the wrong moments. So, let’s say it is 110 degrees outside. This pushes the gap together as the substrate expand with heat and the caulk compresses. So far, not too difficult! But take the winter months, the bulk is cold and more rigid at the same point the substrate is shrinking and stretching the caulk. Okay, don’t stress out! This is what caulk is designed to do. So why is is so important to prime first. It has to do with the grip of the adhesion. Caulk stick to primed wood quite a bit better than bare wood. So as the tension build to pull the caulk away from the wood and then back to pushing it into the wood, your caulk has a good and compatible surface to adhere to. This gives your caulk a better chance of sticking to it.

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People are always amused when we tell them that we love to paint. Most people hate to paint. So what is it that we love about painting? First, it takes a ton of manpower and trades to transform a kitchen, but it only takes one painter. Okay, you’re right, it isn’t the same thing. But think about bang for the buck. You can’t find a lower cost way to reinvigorate a room or a bunch of rooms quite like paint. A thorough sanding, some extensive patching and caulk, and a few gallons of paint and a day or two and we can have your kitchen and dining room looking like that local Starbucks you love so much! That is the main thing we love about paint.

Having spent the last 20 years serving general contractors the thrill was taking the homely shell of a building and dressing it up with all the colors and finishes. It’s almost like you brought the whole thing to life! Yes, all that other stuff needs to be done well too, but it your finishes aren’t right, no much else matters! Most builders look at paint as a minor trade, and, in dollars, it is. But paint often makes up over 70% of what you see when you walk into a building. That’s no minor trade!

And how about the exterior! Nothing brings attention to you and your home like a great new color scheme on your business or home. After years of dirt, rain, and the sun beating down on your home, things start to look worn and tired. You’d be surprised how much energy comes back to your family, guests, and customers when they feel that clean new paint job! You know the feeling, don’t you?

A great paint job makes all the difference. Do you want to spice up your home or office areas? What a great idea – don’t wait! We are eager to get your project underway!

Perhaps the most helpful article on why deck coating failure is so common is one found at this link https://thepaintpeople.com/painting-101/why-is-my-deck-stain-failing/. We get a lot of calls to stain decks and, honestly, it used to be one of our least favorite surfaces to paint. The ugly truth is that decks are one of the most difficult things to paint or stain. Combine that with the fact that most customers want the deck coating to last for five to ten years, every painting contractor cringes at the thought of staining deck. Here are the unique challenges that your deck and your painting contractor face when finishing decks.

First, is the condition and nature of the wood. Most homeowners call us only after the wood on their deck degrades past a realistic state where you can actually get coatings to adhere. Wood fibers degrade rather quickly with water and UV exposure. If you stained a piece of paper and left it outside for a week, you would see the effects of the sun and rain on the paper. Why, if it was coated well, does it matter if it is exposed to water or sun? The simple answer is that most coatings are breathable or permeable and they are for very good reasons. The second has to do with the nature of paper. When exposed to the elements it will expand and contract and experience a lot of movement. The wood fiber in the paper is basically the same as the degraded wood fibers in your deck. One way to help minimize deck failures is to clean them thoroughly and sand them down thoroughly. This will help removed any degraded fibers and to open areas so the stain can penetrate down to a stable fiber to help them stay in tact for longer. And keep in mind that every time your stain or paint is scratched, it give water a new opportunity to get underneath the stain or paint and work to separate or delaminate the paint from the wood fibers. The article explains this well. If you pull the loose paint off the the deck and you can see wood fibers on the back of the paint, you have unstable wood on your deck and this will have to be dealt with. Sanding and wire brushing will go a long ways to a better prep job. Wood that is deeply split will need to be brushed out well to ensure all the wood inside the split is coated too.

The second has to do with surface contaminants. Most of us keep our grills on the deck, a very logical place to cook your food out on nice afternoons. I would never argue that you shouldn’t cook on your deck, but I do want you to understand how this works to affect the adhesion of the stain or paint to the wood. Grease sinks very deep into the wood fibers and is nearly impossible to remove it all from the wood fibers. If you stain or paint is popping off in areas where your grill is or was placed, chances are the oils are causing an adhesion issue.

Finally, conditions in nature will often have a huge effect on paint or stain performance. UV rays and water are the main enemies of paint. This is one reason we try our best to steer customers away for transparent or semi-transparent stains for decks. The best way to keep the UV rays from degrading your wood is to block them by using an opaque stain. With any deck job, the two main objectives for a coating is they must keep the water from touching the wood fibers and it must block the UV rays from getting to the wood fibers. If you could achieve this with a coating, you could have a real chance of a long lasting job! Trouble is, this is harder to do than you think. My advice is to have it done right with a quality solid stain and get the deck re-stained at least every four years.

Nothing is more disheartening than finding extreme damage to your concrete block walls. If you own a CMU building, you probably know what I am talking about. Loose paint, stair steps, water bags, missing mortar joints, and efflorescence are just a few of the problem building owner face and the maintenance of these buildings can be a painful lesson in vigilance.

Some problems are caused by movement as the wall heats up and cools down. On a winter day it isn’t uncommon for the walls to reach ambient temperatures as low at -20 degrees F and, if your walls are painted a dark color, to reach 50 degrees in the daytime sunshine. That is a huge and fast temperature swing in a relatively short time – and this can happen day in and ay out. In the summer, you walls can reach over 120 degrees in the hot summer sun. Most builders put expansion joints in the walls every 20 to 40 feet. Older buildings didn’t usually get this treatment so they are prone to cracking at these stressed areas.

Peeling and missing mortar joints are often the result of getting water inside your wall. Water is a pernicious ruiner of buildings. It can enter through a leaky roof, a cracked mortar joint, a poor paint job that didn’t seal all the pores, a leaky coping, or through failing caulk joints. Once water enters, it will be drawn out by the heat of the day and nothing will stop it. It’s hard to imaging the amount of hydraulic pressure involved as the water is drawn out or as it freezes in the block overnight. Our sprayers operate at around 3,200 psi. Larger hydraulic presses can operate at over 20,000 psi. Freezing water can generate up to 25,000 psi! Nature and her God are incredible! You can only imagine the damage freezing water can do to your building. You should really get this taken care of sooner than later!

Now for the cure. I hate to tell you that once you see peeling paint, the cost to repair it can be multiples of a simple clean and paint. The loose paint will have to be stripped from the block and the failed joints will have to be repaired and this takes very large pressure washers and an abundance of time. A simple fast food exterior repaint goes for around $5,000 but if your building has this kind of damage, that can easily exceed $12,000. The good news is that, once the remedy is applied, your building will be good to go for another decade or so with little to think about. Of course, this doesn’t include the other solutions like a new roof or replaced caulk joints, so you should be prepared to spend a good deal of money!

In the last few years, Americans have taken a deep look into our own lives and the value of our history, our religion, ourselves really. Some things became increasingly clear to many of us. We value our families, our country and what it means to us, our history, our future, and probably most pointedly, our work. As many had the threat looming over their heads for over a year of loosing their work for an indefinite period of time, I heard so many concerns that focused less on livelihood and more on their work. Work gives us meaning and belonging. For the past few decades, I think we’ve been making career choices based on the paycheck and the possibilities and not on what really makes us tick. This is practical, but at the end of your life, will you be happy with it?

Proverbs 23:4-5 says,

”Don’t wear yourself out to get rich;
because you know better, stop!
As soon as your eyes fly to it, it disappears,
for it makes wings for itself
and flies like an eagle to the sky.”

If you haven’t taken the time to stop and take stock of your life, you should. Or maybe you are graduating this year and are giving more serious thought to your life’s work. Consider these words and choose your path on more than just money. Like riches, your life tends to grow wings and fly away – ask anyone in their 60’s or older and they will tell you that life is brief.

During my years as a painter in the field, I frequently heard older men complaining about their choice of working in the trades and how they tell their kids to do ANYTHING else. What a shame! I feel sorry for them – and a little confused. I always enjoyed my choice, but I am a fourth generation painter so maybe it’s just in the blood. I don’t know but I can’t imaging anywhere else I’d rather be! New job sites from time to time, freedom to work at your own pace (i.e. not factory work), and meeting lots of new people – I love it. Not to mention taking a naked building or building in disrepair and putting a fresh new look is enthralling. I mean, some color schemes do more than breath new life into a room, they change the entire meaning of the space. Lighting and the finishes are what make a space what it is! I am thrilled to be a part of that transformation!

I think the problem is that we have a tendency to blame our circumstances on our careers or anything other than ourselves and our poor choices. When your life isn’t turning out the way you planned, you should stop and take stock. Most of the time I realize it is of my own doing and usually just plain old bad thinking. God has a way of making your life turn out in ways that are greater than your dreams if you will just take the time and care to see it! So why DO I tell my kids to go into the trades?

First, the trades are a much better place to work than they used to be. We have left behind the days of the adversarial employer/employee and client/business relationships. Most people want a partner who is vested in the vision of their business and not a reluctant laborer. We’ve worked hard to craft a company that thrives on this culture. Our employees are value team members who add real value to our product. We don’t just paint, we paint with distinction and with an eye to our clients needs. We do this out of a genuine are for our employees and our clients. This is what it means to do unto others as you’d have them do to you. The golden rule should guide all of our actions and thoughts. You’d might be surprised how much peace this will bring to your life and the lives around you.

Second, you can actually make a good living in the trades. I have nine children and have always had as many mouths to feed as I could handle, but God was faithful to provide. I don’t think we ever missed a meal! In fact, most of our crew members will make around $25 per hour within two years of hire. If you work 45 hours a week, that is over $60,000. Your average college graduate only makes between $45,000 and $55,000 per year on the same hours. But, it’s not about the money anyway. Just a point that tradesman actually make decent wages. You can start a career in painting straight from high school, have no college debt, and become a Team Leader making $75,000 in as little as three years if you are hard working and don’t shy away from responsibility.

Finally, it isn’t really about the money anyway, right. It should be about the kind of life you want. If you want to be a marine biologist, you are going to need at least 6 years of college – go for it, that what I though I wanted to be when I was a senior in high school. But I think I am happier now than I would have been. Oh, yeah, before I forget – you need to know this! Happiness is a choice. Disney is lying to you when they say you can be anything you want to be. You can’t, but sure you can try for it. Maybe you’ll make it. Happiness isn’t determined by how many of your dreams come true, it really is a choice you make each night before you go to bed and every morning when you wake up. Just as the happy people why they are happy. They will all have quite different reasons, but that is what they choose to make them happy. Let it not be true of you that youth is wasted on the young. Be wise by making wise choices and choosing to be happy!

As a bonus, some of our more “modern” way of thinking hasn’t made it into the trades yet. The safest places are the places where people are still plain talking and unafraid to hurt peoples feelings, most of us find this a better way to live – to know that there are real disagreements, but we can respect each other despite of those differences. Victimhood isn’t a way of life with too many in the trades. So come join us in our work, you won’t regret it!

Still not convinced, give me a call at 317-528-9500 today – I’d be happy to sit down with you over a coffee (or whatever your drink of choice is these days) and have a chat about it!

The garage is often the most forgotten room of the house. Whether you keep your car in the garage or use is for a large storage space, you probably don’t like to spend much time there and for good reason. Garages, like basements, can be the dingiest place in the house. Now imagine if you were to spend a little bit of time and money painting the walls, ceiling, and floor. Then you install some decent shelving and organize everything. Now you have another room of your house you can be proud of. Not only proud, but you can actually find things in there now! The first step is a good clean out and painting of those floors. Lucky for you, we have several good options that will fit a tight budget to a long lasting professional job.

We can paint most garage floors for as little at $1.50 per square foot if you empty the garage. For this budget price, we clean the floor with a scrubber to remove all dirt and grease. We fill any cracks with self-leveling caulk and trim the top when after is sets up. Next, we apply two coast of an aliphatic epoxy paint that adheres to almost any substrate. From here, you can add color chips and a clear coat if you choose to for as little as another $1 per square foot. This process is guaranteed for two years from disbonding. An average two car garage with this system will cost about $1,250.

If you want a more durable finish, we will grind all the existing coating off your floor, fill all cracks with an epoxy filler, and apply a primer, two coats of urethane two component floor coating with a clear topcoat. This system will cost $4.50 per square foot but comes with a 5 year disbonding warranty. A typical two car garage for this system will cost around $3,400.

If you need help unloading your garage, we can supply the labor for that too for an additional fee and we can help arrange a portable storage pod for your belongings while the work is in process. We typically need three to four days to perform this work due to cure times between coats.

Every time I run my truck through the car wash and detail the interior, it feels like I just bought a new truck. Clean, fresh smelling, and shiny! The same is true of your building – a good cleaning is one of the best bangs for the buck. A thorough pressure washing will remove dirt and fade from your building and years of staining from your parking lot and sidewalks.

Our professional services will show up at a convenient time for you so we don’t get in the way of your operations. We then pretreat all surfaces with an environmentally safe detergent that will loosen up all the stubborn grime. Next, our professionally trained crew will carefully and skillfully clean all the surfaces on your building from the delicate EIFS to the CMU and sidewalks. We guarantee that you will notice a difference and so will your customers.

Our sales team can put together a comprehensive quote for you as most quotes will need to be custom crafted, but an average car dealership building will be priced around $4,000 and another $1,000 to add all concrete sidewalks and approaches. A smaller fast food restaurant will normally cost around $1,500 to pressure wash the building and all sidewalk/drive through concrete. If we show up for the quote and don’t think we can make it look better, we will tell you upfront so you can spend your hard earned cash elsewhere.

Give us a call today to setup your quote visit!

One of the most frequently asked questions we get is whether stained trim can be painted. The simple answer is yes, we can do that! Let me step you through the process. But before we begin, are you really sure you want to paint that beautiful product of nature? It took decades for that tree to produce those beautiful rich grains and some craftsman took the care to sand, stain, and apply that clear coat to make that luxurious deep wood come to life! Okay, now that that is over, here is how we prep and paint stained trim.

First, we perform a series of tests to see what is on the trim. In most cases, it is simply an oil based polyurethane which is pretty simple to re-coat. But we also run into lacquers and even catalyzed urethanes that can be difficult to get paint to stick to. By rubbing several solvents on the trim, we can determine what is on your trim and only then can we come up with the correct steps to ensure a great finish for your trim. In most cases, a simple sand down followed by a bonding primer will get your trim ready for just about any topcoat.

Second, we prep you trim according to our findings. A healthy sanding and a bonding primer is suitable for most existing finishes. You will want to make sure you or your contractor always perform adhesion tests on these types of surfaces. If the adhesion test is not successful, more sanding or a different bonding primer might be necessary. Once you do get good adhesion, you will want to use a better grade trim paint. We prefer Sherwin Williams Emerald Urethane Trim Enamel, Benjamin Moore Advance, or PPG Ultralast for most trim applications.

Finally, after you’ve prepped and applied your bonding primer, make sure the paint is applied with either spray finish or with higher grade, new brushes to ensure minimal brush marks. You will want to make sure at least two coats are applied to ensure a good build of paint to make a durable finish! Our company paints trim at around $2.50 per linear foot for most new and repaint applications.

Steel buildings are a good investment for many businesses who need lower cost space and are very versatile from storage to office uses. Most steel buildings will need painted within 20 years of their erection. If you wait too long and see rust starting to appear, the preparation and priming will set you back a good bit more than if you catch it in time. Most of the time, all you need to do is pressure wash, spot prime with a DTM (direct to metal) primer and paint with a good grade exterior paint. If rust has started to appear in more than 10%, you will need a full prime with DTM primer or it will need to be painted with DTM paint to make sure the rust is held at bay. Nothing will ruin your investment faster than ignoring the warning signs that your metal building needs maintenance to keep it in good, leak proof shape.

Our team can get your building painted in almost any color you want and even paint a stripe on it if that’s your thing! We can use standard exterior paints like PPG AcriShield, PPG Permanizer, or PPG PitTech+ for a more durable finish. We also offer longer lasting SWP SherCryl for more fade resistant durability. For standard paints our quotes usually come in at around $7,000 for a 40×60 building with a side eave height of 16’. Roof painting is a bit more as it usually involves a lift rental and requires additional prep and better paint. A roof on a 40×60 building usually costs around $6,000 and includes SWP Shercryl or PPG PitTech+ SG and will come with a five year warranty.

If you have a steel building that is looking a little dull or even starting to rust, you should give us a call now and save your investment! Our team is eager to serve you – call 317-528-9500 today to get your free quote.

One of the questions we most often get as a painting contractor is whether you can paint vinyl siding. While the quick answer is yes, you can paint vinyl siding, there are some considerations you need to be aware of. First, make sure the siding is thoroughly washed. Vinyl is actually quite porous especially as it ages. It also degrades in the UV rays of the sun so it fades pretty quickly. You will wan to wash off all contaminants including mildew, dirt, and the degraded vinyl before you paint it. Just remember the basic rules for painting anything is that it must be dry, dull, stable, and clean.

Second, you need to be aware that you should never paint vinyl siding a much darker color than its factory color. You can go slightly deeper, but too deep and the vinyl will take on too much heat and warp – then you will have to replace all of the vinyl on your home or business. Some paint suppliers sell a “Vinyl Safe” paint that solves this problem and does work quite well, our recommendation, however, is never paint vinyl a color deeper than 1/2 way from the current color to black. This is an art more than a science, but our estimators and project managers can help you decide the appropriate color depth for your painting project.

Finally, make sure you get at least a three year warranty on the paint job. Most failures will happen in the first year (this is why the one year warranty is the industry norm), but for vinyl you will want at least a three year warranty to ensure your job will hold up to the hottest of the summer sun. Another final thing to watch our for is the movement of the vinyl. As the years go by, your vinyl will expand and shrink with the seasonal flow. This will reveal narrow 1/4 unpainted overlaps. Our crews will gently move your vinyl to the one side so that this won’t happen to you. And if it does, our five year exterior warranty as you covered! If you have an exterior vinyl paint job you’d like us to look at, give us a call to set up your free consultation.