Just as I had things all buttoned up on the exteriors and was painting a large interior project my phone rings with a client who "really needs" a coat of paint on her new entry porch before she is shoveling snow off of it. So there I was, fourty - three degrees and freezing.
Kind of funny but after some prep I headed back to my cozy interior only to find that the carpenter running the job had turned off the heat to "conserve oil". Holly cow! does nobody want things to dry?
Thursday, December 1, 2011
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
nice days
more nice days has extended my exteriors till mid november. Not sure I will see this again.
Sunday, October 2, 2011
Smart Prime
So I love Zinnser products, a company of Rustoleum, things like BIN have never let me down. So when Smart Prime came out and claimed to have all the benefits of oil primer in a water based product I jumped. First application, something I hate to do, seal wallpaper to be painted over. This I hate but in this instance it was required. So I challenged Smart Prime to seal in the little red flowers from bleeding through my top coat. The challenge was to do one coat Smart Prime, two coats quality finish paint. Fail.
Next was using Smart Prime to prime already painted trim to receive two finish coats of quality latex paint. This resulted in a poor bond after a few days but the company assured me that in a full week I would need "a chisel" to scrape it off. Well although it was extremely fragile for several days after that seven it was indeed solid. Pass
Try number three was to prime new pine trim in a house and then spray a fine finish over the top. Well after the primer dried for a few days I went back through and sprayed my finish, a few days after that the wood started to tan. Fail
Most recently I used the smart prime on a light water stain on a ceiling. I applied two coats as suggested on the can for tough stains and let dry then i put on the finish paint. Fail
Safe to say that at $30 a gallon I'm not using this stuff any more.
Next was using Smart Prime to prime already painted trim to receive two finish coats of quality latex paint. This resulted in a poor bond after a few days but the company assured me that in a full week I would need "a chisel" to scrape it off. Well although it was extremely fragile for several days after that seven it was indeed solid. Pass
Try number three was to prime new pine trim in a house and then spray a fine finish over the top. Well after the primer dried for a few days I went back through and sprayed my finish, a few days after that the wood started to tan. Fail
Most recently I used the smart prime on a light water stain on a ceiling. I applied two coats as suggested on the can for tough stains and let dry then i put on the finish paint. Fail
Safe to say that at $30 a gallon I'm not using this stuff any more.
Friday, September 30, 2011
So you need some help painting in NH
Hello I'm Rob and I own Robert Codman Painting and Wallcoverings in Hancock, NH. Most of the time when I tell people what I do they always have a follow up question about some project they are doing, going to do, or did but had problems. So here I am just going to start posting on what I have been doing on certain jobs because when I need to know what to do I look back on my experiance, so now we all get a chance to look back and use, (or not use) my experiance.
The last few days I relearned a valuable leson that has proven to help business. I was painting a living room and hall for an older customer who has done all of her own painting for years but now just does not want to do it. What this really means is that I have a lot of work ahead. See there was a lot of "roll over" on trim work and doors. "Roll over" is the term I use when paint get built up on the edge of something. When an unexperiance painter tries to paint say a door, the paint will pile up on the edge and dry as a bulge or a run. This can happen on all edges and is really what separates someone who paints from a painter, it also is what separates a paying job from a job you can be proud of. What I mean by this is that I spent a bit of time scraping and sanding off all of this "roll over" from the homeowners painting and it definately took more time than alloted in my estimate. The reward was that even though the homeowner didn't posibly notice what I did they did notice that everytning looked clean and sharp when I was finished. This is the detail that makes someone happy they spent the money on something they normally would have done themselves. I also painted out two closets she emptied but didn't have in the bid. This one worked out because I had enough paint to do it but could have caused some real problems if it used up needed paint. We probably put in an extra hour on the closets and I did a quick sand on a mantle that was covered in years of paint splatter and used some Polyshades I had in the van to bring that back to a new look. One last thing was to replace the painted and stained outlet covers with new ones, a three dollar investment.
Now I probably lost 60 plus dollars on these "extras" but what it did for the overall look of the room was priceless. I know that I will get another room in that house to paint and I also know she will tell all her friends about our work plus she made us cookies...
The last few days I relearned a valuable leson that has proven to help business. I was painting a living room and hall for an older customer who has done all of her own painting for years but now just does not want to do it. What this really means is that I have a lot of work ahead. See there was a lot of "roll over" on trim work and doors. "Roll over" is the term I use when paint get built up on the edge of something. When an unexperiance painter tries to paint say a door, the paint will pile up on the edge and dry as a bulge or a run. This can happen on all edges and is really what separates someone who paints from a painter, it also is what separates a paying job from a job you can be proud of. What I mean by this is that I spent a bit of time scraping and sanding off all of this "roll over" from the homeowners painting and it definately took more time than alloted in my estimate. The reward was that even though the homeowner didn't posibly notice what I did they did notice that everytning looked clean and sharp when I was finished. This is the detail that makes someone happy they spent the money on something they normally would have done themselves. I also painted out two closets she emptied but didn't have in the bid. This one worked out because I had enough paint to do it but could have caused some real problems if it used up needed paint. We probably put in an extra hour on the closets and I did a quick sand on a mantle that was covered in years of paint splatter and used some Polyshades I had in the van to bring that back to a new look. One last thing was to replace the painted and stained outlet covers with new ones, a three dollar investment.
Now I probably lost 60 plus dollars on these "extras" but what it did for the overall look of the room was priceless. I know that I will get another room in that house to paint and I also know she will tell all her friends about our work plus she made us cookies...
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