Renaissance Painting has been down at Science World off and on for a couple of months now painting the interior. It is a two tone colour scheme, with a dark colour on the upper and a lighter colour on the bottom. The interior of the building is very large, with large walls, mechanical systems and support beams running all over the ceiling and near the walls. Due to the large size of the walls, 25 feet high, we have to use an electric scissor lift to reach the top. Due to the size of the project we are spraying the paint on and then backrolling it. Spraying is a very efficient way of painting. You have to be very careful though, as it is potentially dangerous and can be very messy if done by inexperienced painters.
Lead paint can harm children
An SFU professor is warning about potential dangers to children during home renovations.
“Owners of old houses could release lead, asbestos and other toxic chemicals when they scrape, burn or chip at lead-based paints and pipes,” Prof. Bruce Lanphear says in a release. “If you scattered dust from removing old paint, you could actually poison a child.”
He issued the warning because of recent efforts to make homes energy efficient. Such work needs to be approached with great care because of the possibility of releasing toxic chemicals or uncovering asbestos.
As a painter I often warn homeowners of the dangers; however, most of them just want the lowest price and are not interested in minimizing the dangers of the lead dust. I have stopped women using heat guns and told them to wear a properly fitted respirator to prevent the inhalation of vapourized lead.
Painters need to be aware of the dangers to themselves and to the public. At a minimum you need to wear a properly fitted respirator and to wash your hands prior to eating.
How to Paint Kitchen Cupboards
As a Vancouver Painter I am sometimes asked to paint kitchen cupboards. While time consuming, if done properly the results are amazing, cost effective and green.
As with most painting, the first and most important step is the preparation. With cabinets you need to disassemble all of the cabinets, label all of the doors and safely store all of the hardware. The next step is sanding down all of the doors starting with 150 grit sandpaper and then wiping down everything to be painted with TSPe, a green tri-sodium phosphate replacement. At this point you need to prime all of the surfaces. Primer selection is critical, for the simple reason that the cabinets will take a lot of abuse and if you don’t use an excellent primer then they will chip. My preference is either UMA or 400W from the XIM corporation. UMA is a urethane modified acrylic, acts as a primer and an adhesive, so you get a tenacious bond and a full cure in 7 days. It is water based so you can clean up with soap and water.
For the actual priming and painting we setup a mobile spray booth. We do this so that we can get an excellent finish and to protect the surfaces while they are drying. We make dust barriers by using Zip poles from Zip Wall and install a zipperered door for access. We then build temporary drying racks using two by fours and metal racking that is used in shelving. This is strong, flexible and easy to setup.
After priming, we wait for the primer to dry, about three hours and then sand with 180 grit sandpaper. We then paint the first coat. By the way, you will want to use a fine finish tip for the best look. We just did a project in Kitsilano at the corner of 6th and Arbutus, and we used a Graco 212 fine finish tip. So after sanding you put the first coat on, wait for it to dry and then put the final coat on. I highly recommend that you use a good quality paint for the top coat. You need something that will be able to handle being touched and washed, so you really need to get a top coat that is scrubbable.
Once the final coat is done it is best to wait a couple of days for the paint to dry so that you do not damage it during the re-installation.
At the beggining of this blog I wrote that painting cabinets is green. The reason for this is that as long as the cabinets are in good shape and functional it makes sense to paint them rather than throw them out and replace them. It takes less of our resources to essentially recycle the existing cabinets than put them in the landfill.
What can I do with my tile grout asks Vancouver Condo owner?
Almost all homes and condos in Vancouver have tile. Tile has distinct advantages, it is durable, looks great and can be easy to clean. The problem is the grout. Grout is porous, and over time is gets dirty and stained. Eventually as a Vancouver homeowner, you get to the point of asking “what can I do with my grout?” There are a couple of things you can do, one clean as best as you can and re-seal the grout or grind out the grout and install new grout. Let’s look at both of these.
By cleaning and re-sealing with a clear sealer, the problem is that the clear sealers don’t last very long and you are back to square one, and that once stained the grout stays dirty and by sealing all you are doing is sealing in the stains. While better than nothing, it is not a fix. The second fix is grinding out the old grout. This is very messy, time consuming and expensive. Once you are done, you can clear seal the grout. The problem with this is that once again after a period of time the sealer will fail, the grout will stain and you are starting back over again with dirty, stained and impossible to clean grout.
There is a better way. You can do what is called colour sealing. As Interior Painters in Vancouver we are used to cleaning and sealing surfaces so we have come up with a system which cleans the grout and then seals it with a colour sealer. This process essetially stain proofs the grout and makes it look fantastic.
What we do is first protect all areas from the cleaners and the colour sealer. Next we do a deep cleaning process using an alkaline cleaner. We use a wet dry vacuum and vaccuum up all of the cleaner. We then rinse with clean water and vaccuum up all of the rinse water. The second step is we use an acidic deep cleaning and etching agent to open the pores of the grout. We then vacuum up the second cleaner and then rinse and vacuum up the rinse water again. We will now remove any and all old and failing caulking that is usually found at the joints or where the two different surfaces, such as a counter and tile or tub and tile, meet.
After making sure that all surfaces are thoroughly dry we lay down the colour sealer on all of the grout lines, followed by lightly buffing the surrounding tile. After all grout has been sealed we then buff all of the tile to finish the application of the sealer and to lock in the stain proofing. At this point we make sure that all of the colour sealer is dry and then we re-caulk all of the joints either with a top line silicone caulking or with a sanded caulk, which looks like grout but has the flexibility of caulking. You must always caulk joints of different materials, as this is where it will crack if you use grout.
You can use this in just about any application, shower surrounds, counter tops, kichen and bathroom floors etc.
The end result is nothing short of stunning. If you know of anyone that needs help with restoring or making their grout and tile look amazing, let us know. Thanks…
Painting The town Red, or at least one Yaletown Condo
I recently took on an interior painting job in Vancouver’s Yaletown. My client was mortified when her 8 year old granddaughter entered her condo and said “Gramma, your home looks just like a hospital.” The condo was a pale cool green not unlike something you would have seen in a hospital. So in all fairness you have to hand it to the kid she nailed it.
With her granddaughter having pegged her colour choices, unfavourably, my client went down to the Yaletown Benjamin Moore store to get some of the colours available in the individual swatches. While perusing the colours, she asked Michelle, a colour consultant who works in the store, for a recommendation for a interior painter for her Yaletown condo. Much to my delight Michelle gave my card. And this is where I come into the picture.
Upon arriving at the condo and doing a quick walk about, we start talking about colours. My client has decided to paint her kitchen walls and the cupboards in Benjamin Moores Rose Quartz, which is a red. Upon looking at the colour on the chip, I say “we are going to have to use a deep base primer.” The reason being, I explain, is that certain reds have a lot of magenta in them and magenta is very poor at hiding. To get the proper colour and to do it in only two finish coats we will need to prime all of the surfaces being painted with a tinted deep base primer.
We ended up using Fresh Start Deep Base primer prior to applying Benjamin Moore’s Kitchen and Bath paint in a Pearl finish. Prior to priming we washed all surfaces being painted with TSP and sanded.
In the end we have a magnificent red kitchen. We are doing our part in painting the town red.
How to Paint the Interior of a Nicotine stained apartment, basement suite or home
Truth is, most homeowners in Vancouver don’t smoke anymore. Last I heard only 15 percent of Vancouverites actually smoke, on a daily basis, and a lot of smokers do not smoke inside their home even if they do. In the event that you need to paint your home, apartment or you have purchased a home from an estate sale that was occupied by a heavy smoker, you have your work cut out for you.
On a side note, I remember being 11 years old, living in Victoria BC and I had a paper route for the the afternoon paper. Back then it was called the Victoria Times. Paperboys, almost all of them were boys, in fact the only girl that I can recall delivering papers was my older sister. That did not last long. The point I wanted to make was that we had to collect the monthly subscription fees from the subscribers on our route. This was a pretty big responsibility for an 11 year old, as I would have hundreds of dollars - which was a lot of money back then - that had to be paid to the Publisher. What was left over was mine. Once again, my point was I remember going to collect from an elderly gentleman and when he came to the door it was something out of a Harry Potter movie his hands were stained brown from nicotine,especially between the two fingers that he held his cigarettes. I can also clearly remember looking over to where his chair was and looking up at the ceiling and it was stained brown above his seat. To this day that picture is burned into my minds eye.
So, if you can imagine trying to sell a condo here in Vancouver, or rent out an apartment or basement suite after a heavy smoker has lived there you will appreciate how appalled the other 85% of the population feel. How do you take a home, that has been smoked in and get it ready for either sale or rent?
First you have to wash all of the walls, ceilings (if they are smooth) with TSP, tri sodium phosphate, which is an excellent cleaner. Sometimes the surfaces are so bad that you have to wash two even three times with the TSP. After washing, you will need to allow the surfaces to dry. You can speed this up by getting the air moving by brining in fans. This is much better than turning up the thermostat. Once the walls are dry you will need to use a stain blocking primer sealer. This is in case there is any residual nicotine still left. At this point you may be saying, why not just paint it, won’t that work? No, it will not work. The reason is that nicotine is water soluble and by putting a water based paint on the walls the nicotine will just bleed through.
In the event that you have a textured ceiling, you will not be able to wash it down with TSP. Instead, I suggest that you just go ahead and apply the primer sealer. You may have to do a second coat of primer sealer due to the porosity of the textured ceilling.
Once the primer sealer is dry you will be able to start painting. This whole process is very unpleasant it will ensure that the interior painting project will end up properly done with no staining whatsoever.
Luckily for me in over 15 years of painting Vancouver interiors I have only had to do this 5 or 6 times. It is interesting to note that of the two hundred clients I have only had about 6 homeowners that smoked.
I see a Red Door
Yes, that is a line in a Rolling Stones song; however, in this case I did not want to paint it black. I was recently called by an owner in Vancouver’s Fairview Slopes who was searching for a Vancouver Painter to repaint a door that had oil leaking from the hydraulic door closer. She wanted me to do a colour match of the existing colour, clean off the leaked oil and repaint the door.
When I arrived, the first thing I did was pull out my Sherwin Williams fan deck and match the existing colour. For my colour match, I came up with Luxurious Red SW 6314, made a note of it and proceeded to do the cleaning. Ok, so how do you clean the oil off? Well what you want to do is find a compatible solvent, in this case it is mineral spirits, sometimes referred to as paint thinner. I would recommend laying out a drop cloth or something to protect the floor and then putting on some solvent resistant gloves to protect your hands from the mineral spirits. Liberally apply the solvent to the rag and wipe the door until all of the oil is removed. You should not need to worry about affecting the finish on the door as you will need to repaint the door anyways. Once you have gotten the oil off, take a clean rag and some thinner and give the area one last wipe to remove any lasting oil residue. You now need to wait for all of the paint thinner to evaporate. This is a great time to get your paint. Luckily for me, there was a Sherwin Williams store nearby at the corner of 8th and Yukon.
Once I had picked up the paint and set up my work area I noticed that the previous painter had hit paint on a number of surfaces around and on the door such as the frame, hinges, lock set etc. I brought the owner out and showed her all of this and explained that this was a pre-existing condition. The time to do this is always before, never after. It is much easier to explain what the condition of the surfaces are prior to doing your work. I mean, if you paint the exact same colour how would they know it was the previous painter and not you?
I proceed to tarp off the floor, pour the paint into the tray and start cutting in the edges. Once I have cut in all of the edges I roll out the faces of the door, carefully laying off the paint. When rolling it is recommended to use a good quality 5mm roller sleeve. At this point I can clean up and get all of my equipment loaded into my van.
Interior Condo Painting Testimonial
“Eric is prompt, reliable and trustworthy…all extremely important when hiring on my client’s behalf! Thanks Eric” Patti Ransom Interior Designer from Bachelor Pad Interiors