- CSLB License #1112398
Most painting contractors will start by "Hard Washing" the house, which is to just blast water at high pressures to remove debris, risking damage to the siding and not doing anything to remove oils or dirt trapped in the wood. We start by soaking the home at low pressure with a biodegradable, diluted-bleach solution to strip all of the years of hand oils, tannin bleeding, and grime.
This process also kills and removes mildew. Once applied and activated, the solution is washed off low pressure leaving the house undamaged but exceptionally clean and a strong surface onto which paint will bond.ar dapibus leo.
Most of the homes in Tuolumne County experience some amount of sun or water damage before they're painted. Sun damage often presents first as cracking in the paint and when more severe as the paint curling and peeling back. Water damage usually starts as minor peeling and turns into larger peels when left unfixed, or presents as various forms of rot.
Many contractors will use the "Hard Washing" mentioned above to remove the extremely loose coatings and will call it a day, claiming that this is an adequate solution. That's half true: these problems can be half-repaired and buried in paint, and will look great when you cut the final check.
The issues with these half-repairs don't typically present for another 2-4 years, but when they come back they do so with a vengeance. We know from experience that it's necessary to scrape failed coatings manually using metal scrapers, and to sand the edges smooth to eliminate the issues from returning. We can take this process to varying lengths: we can sand the entire house smooth at a premium price (not included as standard). But the bare minimum to actually solve these problems is to scrape the failed coatings wherever they're found and sand the edges smooth.
Before moving forward, it should be made clear that wood rot can almost never be solved with painting alone. There are circumstances in which certain fillers can solve minor rot issues, but generally speaking actual rot must be removed and replaced. Lucky for our customers, we keep a full-time carpenter employed at Jesse McCandless Painting to perform all of our rot repairs in house!
You'd think this was a no-brainer, but many contractors will skip this exceptionally important step. Following scraping and sanding the edges of all the failed coatings found on your home, we apply primer to any areas where the home was taken down to bare wood.
Most exterior paints claim to be self-priming, and there are absolutely circumstances in which they've been used as self-priming successfully. The reason we're not willing to trust this claim is simple: we know that priming bare surfaces guarantees good adhesion for the topcoat, but we don't know that a self-priming paint will always work.
Importantly, very few exterior paint manufacturers will honor warranties if the substrates below them were not properly prepared or primed.
Ask any window professional or well-reputed building contractor and you'll get the same answer: caulk should not be what's relied on to waterproof your home. When homes are built and windows installed correctly, flashing behind the siding and good, tight carpentry is what waterproofs your home.
Caulking should never be relied on as a fix for water issues, because three things are true: death, taxes and caulk will crack.
Your home moves and even the best elastomeric caulks cannot hold up to years of movement and damage from the elements. For this reason, we treat caulking your home as what it is: an aesthetically pleasing addition. Caulking the sides of the window and door trims allows us to create beautiful lines when we cut between colors, and helps blend the gaps into the walls. We will never caulk the bottoms of trims to ensure that when the top does eventually crack that water will escape through the bottom, instead of back into your home. We caulk any existing caulking failures for the same aesthetic reason: painting over it would just look bad!
We can offer additional caulking at an additional rate and are happy to do so - it's your house and we want it to look just how you want it. Just beware contractors that claim they're waterproofing or bug-proofing your home with caulk: the more places you seal up, the more places have the opportunity to hold water and create rot. Excessive caulking has caused more rot than it has ever prevented!
With very few exceptions we always apply two coats of paint to exteriors. There are a hundred reasons why, but they all boil down to these:
One coat of paint cannot guarantee a color change.
One coat of paint almost absolutely guarantees holidays and sheen issues (missed spots, inconsistencies in spray patterns).
One coat of paint will not hold up as long as two, even if it is applied at an above-average thickness.
We cut the window and door trims "face cut" as standard. This means that the fronts and insides of trim will be in the trim color, but the outer edge where it meets the wall will be in the body color. We also offer "Wrap Cut" trim where we have the trim painted on all sides. If you're interested, just ask!
You'd think that if the rest of the house is getting painted that the doors would always be included, but we've heard too many stories of contractors asking for extra money at the end of the project because they weren't explicitly included in the contract.
Re-painting all currently painted passage and garage doors is explicitly included in this contract.
When we paint currently painted passage doors or garage doors, we will treat them with the same approach as we do the rest of the house: we remove the failed coatings, sand the edges smooth, and apply two coats of paint. In some circumstances where we spray doors we will only apply one if there are concerns about paint thickness affecting fitment: this decision is made by the painters as it comes up.
Some doors may require a more thorough restoration than just sanding, priming and painting. If that is the case on your home, that work will either be priced in automatically, or will be an explicit addition separate from the scope listed above.
This does not include stained doors. Stained doors almost always need more work than you'd think and the work is typically more specialized. As such stained doors are always priced as separate options.
There are many things that set us apart from our competitors, but they’re not always so easy to see or remember after our initial meeting. Below is a detailed explanation of how we approach exterior painting projects. We view every home as an opportunity to provide the best paint job it has ever received: not just an attractive finish, but an exceptionally durable one. You can take everything below, where applicable, as an extension of our proposal.
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