This was an interesting job. As with most flips, there is a limited budget and usually the worst of conditions to begin with. I wish I took before pics. This duplex in Atlantic Heights was an absolute dump. The duplexes in this neighborhood are very nice starter homes for couples or families with a baby. The character of the brick exterior combined with older construction features give these units the vintage feel that can really benefit from minor updates, and a little paint.

I hope you like our hard work!

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We were very excited last week to finally take advantage of the unseasonably high temps and kickoff our exterior painting season at a nice home in Portsmouth, NH in the Little Harbor School neighborhood. This was a job I had quoted after being referred a couple of years ago, and patience was a virtue here. The homeowners decided 2012 was the year!

This job was a great example of how we offer comparable systems to Rhino Shield and Lifetime Exteriors. We started with a home that had not been painted in some time, and the current finish was a semi transparent stain. The homeowners fell in love with the exterior paint color of a home down the street in Newcastle, and off we went.

We scraped all trim and sanded the entire home here with palm sanders to start. From there we sprayed a nice coat of XIM Peel Bond Bonding Primer on all substrates. As the primer dried it’s high build features gave the wood a nice even appearance.

For the finish coat we used Storm System solid stain by California Paints, matched to Cabot’s Bluestone color. The trim color is stock Titanium White in California 2010 satin gloss trim paint. I find this to be one of the finest exterior paints available, and in this case, it really gave the new siding color a beautiful contrast.

I hope you like our hard work!

If you are interested in an estimate on your own home, please click here.

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We are very excited to announce our membership in the Green Alliance!

In recent years, it has become very clear that our customers and employees deserve safe, non toxic, low VOC surroundings. We intend to deliver on that as best we can with everything from low VOC paints and solvents, to soy based paint strippers, to green operating standards for our company.

We look forward to working together with both the consumer partners and other business partners in the Green Alliance to promote and practice sustainable living.

Check out the Green Alliance for more info HERE

Have you tried to paint ceilings in your recently purchased, older home, only to find they are peeling almost as fast as your are rolling the paint on?

This is a common problem. It occurs because of a product called calcimine, which was used in the first half of the last century to coat ceilings and walls. Calcimine is a coating that is made by mixing calcium carbonate, water, and glue to make a substance that is fast drying, opaque, and easy to use.

There are many solutions tossed around for this issue but really only three effective ones.

Tear down

Take down the board or plaster, and replace, thus avoiding having to deal with this anymore. This could be quite costly and unnecessary, depending on the condition of the wall.

Complete removal of calcimine coating

This is a good middle ground between spot repair and total replacement, as you are scraping all of the calcimine off, which, if it is already peeling, should not be as hard as it sounds.

For this you will need plenty of plastic for the floor, items in the room, and doorways into the room. Next you will need a good calcimine sealer. This is really important because, although you have removed the coat from the surface, there is still plenty of residue that the sealer will penetrate to ensure proper adhesion of patch and paint coats.

Once you have primed the area and it is completely dry, you will want to fill any imperfections with a normal, lightweight joint compound, followed by a sanding of these spots.

Now you can paint. Many people insist on priming but I believe that a good high hide ceiling paint applied in multiple coats looks good and lasts as long as if you had primed then painted.

Spot repair
This is the same system as described above, but applied to smaller areas or as needed.

You are now free to step back from the ledge, as your ceiling will no longer be inexplicably peeling, and you can move onto the next project.

Thanks for stopping by and check back later for more useful tips from Any Season Painting.