House painting is commonly looked upon as a once-in-many-years event, which often translates as follows: wait until everything looks bad and then do it over. There is a better and cheaper way!

Paint Maintenance Eye

The problem with this conventional approach is that, by the time your house looks like it really needs a paint job, other serious problems may have developed that will require expensive carpentry repairs, the replacement of windows or doors and, sometime, the repair of interior damage caused by an exterior issue. These problems could have been avoided or greatly minimized if they had been detected early.

As house painting contractors, we believe in paint maintenance and the concept that an ounce of prevention is worth many pounds of correction. We recommend a periodic inspection of the exterior painted surfaces of a house. For newer homes, we recommend inspecting the house every three years at the most. For older houses, we recommend two years. For the oldest wood houses in our care, we recommend a yearly inspection. What do we look for?

When doing a paint inspection, we pay close attention to the condition of the caulk. When caulk begins to crack, it is a point of entry for moisture, which often gets trapped and will rot the wood. Where is this most likely to occur? The most vulnerable areas are: miter cuts, where a brick molding meets the sill, where two wood surfaces meet and where wood meets a different substrate like brick or masonry.

Our paint inspection also focuses on detecting early signs of paint failure. Where are they more likely to occur? They are: window sills, the top portions of muntin bars, the top of the rails on panel doors, the lower four feet around a house, the dormer surfaces near the roof shingles and the trim boards around gutters. Old clapboard house with ten to twenty coats of paint present an added challenge. The surface tension on the paint coating is such that, combined with our harsh Northern climate, it can cause all the paint layers to crack and begin to fail.

Having detected the paint maintenance issues, we then repair the caulk, prep the painted areas, spot-prime and spot-paint as needed. Doing this kind of paint maintenance can be done in one or two man-days for newer houses and two to four man-days for old houses. It not only adds years to the useful life of a paint job, improves the long-term appearance of the house, but also saves money on costly repairs and replacement. Call on us today for your FREE paint inspection.

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