PNW House Painting

Oct 2016

Although we left the interior trim the same, we painted every wall and ceiling in this client's home! For the ceilings, we used a brilliant white to brighten the area, and the client chose contemporary colors in a zero VOC paint product (no bad paint smell inside the home) for the walls of the individuals rooms and kitchen. Please excuse the black smudges on some of the photos! My iphone was being troublesome the day that I went to take pictures. The client has also already contracted us to re-stain the exterior of the home come springtime. Remember, semi transparent stain should be reapplied every two years to keep the same natural wood appeal without the sun permanently blackening the siding!

$3k

Seattle, WA

Sep 2016

This house had been painted right before it was purchased by my client and the previous painters did a terrible job! In addition to doing a very sloppy job, they painted over loose and peeling paint. Any painter that knows their stuff will tell you that the prep work is what makes a paint job, and that is something we truly pride ourselves in at PNW House Painting. We want your home to look good, but we also want it to stay looking good a long time. But more than just looking good, we want to make sure that your home maintenance costs are as low as possible. Leaving bare wood exposed on your siding over just one wet, western Washington winter can start the process of wood rot. Even if you do not end up having to replace your siding (many thousands of dollars more than you want to pay) the amount of prep work will increase drastically on your paint project. When even small amounts of bare wood are left exposed to the elements, water will enter these points and sweep into the surrounding wood. When this water tries to evaporate out on a sunny say, it will take the paint with it, exponentially growing the area of peeling paint requiring scraping and sanding. That is what happened on this home. Due to budgeting reasons, we were contracted to do one side of the house this season. The worst side, as is almost always the case, was the South side. The only problem here was that the previous contractor/homeowner did not leave details on the color palette. This meant that we had to remove a large chip of paint from the house (not hard to do in this case) and take it to Sherwin Williams to color match. After the computer's 'eyeball' does it's best to match a paint formula to the color, the employees at Sherwin Williams fine tune the match with chosen drops of color, drying it down, and checking it's consistency to the sample in a variety of light sources. It was in this fashion we were able to match the siding and trim paint exactly for this project after doing extensive scraping, sanding, and priming with an oil-based, stain-blocking primer.

$1k

Des Moines, WA

Aug 2016

This was another lead home that we completed late in the season for 2016. We used a product called Resilience because of the spotty weather and the fact that product was made for rain-in-the-forecast days. It's high humidity, low temp application and quick dry time make it perfect for those otherwise chancy weeks int he PNW. Yellow is also a difficult color to stay true in an exterior product and we were able to get a shade that was much to the client's liking!

$6k

Seattle, WA

Jul 2016

A painters favorite! Only one story! On this project, we used Sherwin Williams very well respected Lifetime Guarantee paint - Duration, with one coat on the siding, and two coats on the trim (because white always looks better with two coats, even over white, and besides, trim needs extra protection). The key to properly maintaining composite siding like this to to stop all potential points of entry for water. Oftentimes, as the siding expands and contracts with seasonal temperature variation, the paint will crack around the nail heads. Sometimes, the siding will even expand, leaving a hole where the nailhead has pulled into the siding. As siding like this is essentially wood chips and glue pressed together, any water exposure will cause the glue to dissolve and the material to delaminate - swelling off the side of the house. Another key point to watch is the undersides of the boards, especially close to the ground. These will split and begin to suck in water, swelling the lower portion of the board and disintegrating. You can imagine dipping the edge of a piece of cardboard in a bucket of water to get an idea what happens if this is left too long. We did extensive caulking on this house of every split and sunken nailhead and used the high-build, glue-like primer called PrimeRx to seal the undersides of split boards. The high quality Duration product that we used (which is twice as thick as most house paints) will ensure this paint job lasts many years. Oh, and the client absolutely hated yellow, so she was so glad to have her house finally feel at home on the property!

$3k

Port Orchard, WA

Jul 2016

Yes! We can paint your house no matter how tall it is! We enjoy the challenge, and we've never come up against something we couldn't paint safely. This home was a perfect candidate for Duration from Sherwin Williams which has a lifetime guarantee. Although they recently came out with an even greater product (supposably) Emerald, the case history for Duration as one of the most incredibly long lasting and colorfast choices for paint products on the market is known by contractors and homeowners alike. When most homes are built, a low grade of 'contractor' paint is used to keep the price as low as possible. Oftentimes, homeowners will go many years with this one, thin coat of paint attempting to protect their home, and it is really not sufficient to protect against UV rays, nor to keep the same color year after year. Although we are contractors, we only use top quality 'homeowner's' grade paint! Much like our "Rambler Project" on our profile, this home has composite siding and needed extensive caulking over vast expanses of three-story siding. We caulked the splits, the seams, the broken nailheads, and ensured that the surface was ready for the two coats of paint over the top.

$8k

Bremerton, WA

Jul 2016

This turn of the century home had not been painted in many years and had extensive peeling of its thick, lead based paint. As a lead certified renovator, we followed the EPA guidelines to protect the clients, neighbors, and painters from the hazards of lead paint. Although not pictured (unfortunately) we brought the siding down to bare wood on more than 80% of the surface, especially on the south side where damage was highest. Once the old paint began to peel, we hand scaped all loosely adhered paint off the house, hand sanded the ridges between bare wood and paint to at least a 45 degree angle, and then did NOT apply a primer. The product we chose to use for this project was Woodscapes Solid Stain by Sherwin Williams. In addition to being a stain blocking, solid color product that adheres equally as well to bare wood or previously painted surfaces, it is also thinner than many top of the line house paints. Normally we want to build up a thick layer of paint on a house to prevent UV damage, but with older homes that have many ancient layers of paint using "too good" of a paint can actually cause the freshly painted surface to fail as the new paint drys and pulls the old paint from the house. It was for this reason that we make special care with product selection on older homes and will often recommend either a low build paint, or a solid stain as was used here. We did two coats of Woodscapes, backbrushing both coats into the wood and paint to ensure complete coverage of every nook and cranny on this old home. Also, as the soffits (overhanging eaves) of the house were badly alligatored (paint cracking but not peeling leaving it to look like alligator skin) we sprayed and backbrushed a product call PrimeRx in those places. This product is a high-build, glue-like primer than fills irregularities and bonds old paint together on the surface

$10k

Seattle, WA

Jun 2016

This home was in need of a paint job! Besides the faded colors, there was extensive peeling that was putting the thick lap board siding (very hard to replace) at risk of rotting. We used a stain blocking primer to stop tannin bleed on the bare woods and applied two coats of Sherwin Williams Superpaint product, backbrushing both coasts into the heavily textured siding.

$4k

Shoreline, WA