Exterior Painting

Painting a Building Nobody Owns Alone

An exterior repaint on a single family house is a conversation with one person. On an association it is a conversation with a board, a manager, an architectural committee and however many owners decide to send an email about it. The trade work is the same. The sequence around it is not.

We start with the adopted color schedule and the element map, and we do not mobilize until both exist in writing. If your association has neither, that is our first deliverable rather than a reason to delay the quote.

Washing, and Why It Is Not Optional

A shared building in Long Beach collects a specific kind of grime: salt haze from the harbor, road film on the street elevations, and on the shaded north walls a green cast that is biological rather than dirt. Paint will not stick to any of it.

We pressure wash at a pressure the stucco can take, which is lower than most people expect, and we treat mildew with a suitable cleaner rather than trying to blast it off. Blasting drives water into the wall and leaves the spores. Then the wall needs to dry, properly, and in this climate that is a full day rather than an afternoon.

Crack Repair Before Coating

Older stucco moves. Hairline cracks under about the width of a business card are usually cosmetic and can be bridged by a suitable coating. Anything wider gets routed out, filled with an elastomeric patching compound and textured to match the surrounding wall before priming, because a filled crack that was not matched shows as a smooth stripe under any raking light.

Where cracks run diagonally from window and door corners we look for the cause first. That pattern is movement, and a repaint over it buys a season.

Priming, Then Two Coats

Bare stucco, patched areas and anything chalking badly get a masonry primer. Bare wood on fascia and eave gets a bonding or stain blocking primer depending on what is coming through, since tannin bleed and old water staining need different products and one will not do the other’s job.

Then two coats of the body color. Not one. A single coat over a color change reads thin on the elevations that take direct sun and it is the most common reason an association is looking at a repaint again five years early. We are happy to quote one coat so the board can see the difference in price, and we will note on the proposal what it costs later.

Rail, Gate and Stair Steel

Metal is where coastal buildings fail first. Rust starts at the weld seams, at the anchor points where the rail meets the walkway, and on the underside of the top rail where nobody looks. We wire brush and spot grind back to sound metal, spot prime with a rust inhibitive primer, and finish with a direct to metal coating built for exterior exposure. A house paint on a handrail looks fine for a season and then lifts in sheets.

Working Around People

Owners get notice on the door several days before their building comes up. Patios and balconies are cleared the evening before, we return anything we move, and parking closes in rotation rather than all at once. We do not leave a building masked over a weekend, and we do not spray on a day the wind is coming off the water hard enough to carry overspray onto somebody’s car.

Call (562) 527-4101 and tell us the unit count and the year the buildings went up.