Custom-Painted Playhouse

A custom-built playhouse, in an elegant Hinsdale backyard, complete with its own landscaping, surely deserves an exterior paint job that matches its bones and surroundings. The owner was the successful bidder of the playhouse at a recent fundraising event benefiting the Ronald McDonald House Charities for a whopping $14,000. Our painting and decorating company was invited to decorate this very special fantasy house for a lucky four-year old boy.

Sandy and Chris, the owners, wanted the color scheme to be fun for their son, as well as blend with the colors on the family’s house. After getting initial color input from our clients, we went about developing a color scheme that would meet their needs. Once the seven-color scheme was approved, we went about executing the exterior painting.

Jonathan - The Happy Occupant of the Playhouse

All the trim on the playhouse is cedar, including the five custom-built windows. The ceiling of the canopy and the front door were made out of fir bead board. We chose a solid-color stain from Benjamin Moore, called Arborcoat, for all the surfaces to be decorated. The execution of the work took about twelve hours to complete. Take a look at the completed project! Jonathan, the occupant of this special place, seems to really enjoy having dinner in his new surroundings.

Our house-painting company delights on this type of personal and custom decorating, where the clients’ desires are at the center of our efforts.

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When doing exterior painting, surfaces need to be cleaned and mildew spores have to be killed. In the Chicago area, professional house painting contractors know to clean and power wash surfaces before painting them. However, mildew can often be mistaken for dirt. Even though it looks like dirt, mildew has spores and is a living organism. When mildew is present, power washing or cleaning alone will not get the job done.

In order to grow, mildew needs three things in its environment: moisture, darkness and food. If mildew spores are not killed before the surfaces are painted, you have supplied darkness and sometime a bit of food to enable the mildew to grow. Especially on the sunny side of the building, the heat and cold cycles add condensation (moisture) to the painted surfaces. The net result of these different forces is: mildew will grow between the last two layers of paint and cause the last layer to fail and delaminate from the previous coat, as shown in our pictures.

Not Killing Mildew Spores Before Painting Causes Paint Failure - 1

Not Killing Mildew Spores Before Painting Causes Paint Failure - 2

When mildew is detected, it is essential to use a diluted bleach solution to kill the spores. In our case, we also use a specially formulated product, which includes a mildewcide and detergents, to help produce a more through cleaning of the surfaces. In Chicago and the Northern states, mildew is an ever present problem. It requires vigilance on the part of the house painting contractor. When in doubt, assume there is mildew and treat it accordingly.

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Generally, when people think of exterior painting, they think of a complete repaint of the building. The reason is that it has usually been many years since any painting was done. Often, the paint is flaking in a lot of places, the stain has worn off and the woodwork shows serious rotting. When such signs are visible, it generally means expensive scraping, sanding and caulking, as well as a substantial carpentry bill. If periodic paint maintenance had been performed, such an outcome could have been avoided.

Caulking Failure on Wood Casing

Rotting Wood on Window

In the Chicago area, the elements conspire to undermine the integrity of the caulking, paint film and wood components. The most vulnerable areas are the wood joints and the areas where the wood elements meet other surfaces. If the caulk or paint film breaks, moisture will be allowed to enter the joints and wreak havoc with the paint film and the wood. The first picture depicts such a break in the caulking. Such a minimal failure, if corrected early, can be repaired at little expense.

The second picture shows what happens when the water is allowed to enter the wood joints for a prolonged period of time. Intervening at that stage will mean a more expensive epoxy repair of the window casing and sill. If the repair is delayed further, the entire window might have to be replaced. In some cases, the problem may have as well caused water damage to interior surfaces of the house.

As house painting contractors in the Chicago area, we believe that an ounce of prevention is worth many pounds of correction. Paint maintenance saves money and avoids headaches! To make it easier for our clients to do that sort of paint maintenance, we offer them a FREE inspection of the exterior surfaces of their house. After making a through inspection, we prepare a list of corrective actions, if necessary. Following such a maintenance program adds years to the useful life of a paint job and keeps the house looking good. Email us to schedule a free inspection.

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Over the years, in our exterior painting work in the Chicago area, Painting in Partnership Inc. has encountered a troubling issue with cedar siding: peeling paint (or stain) that comes off in sheets, all the way down to bare wood on the sunniest side of the house. Additionally, on the back of the paint chips are dead wood fibers embedded in the chip. What is going on here?

This problem is part of an ongoing analysis and investigation we, as house painting contractors, are conducting, in order to provide our clients the best possible results for their paint job. When dead wood fiber is present on a surface, it cannot be successfully painted or stained. Before too long, especially in the areas most exposed to the sun, the coating will massively fail.

Peeling Paint on Cedar Siding

There are two issues raised in this last paragraph. First, what caused the dead wood fiber in the first place? There can be several potential reasons, but a common one is exposure to sunlight before the wood is coated for the first time (when the house is first built). The ultraviolet light degrades the lignin and causes cellulose fibers to dry out and causes the wood surface to lose structural integrity. The gray color of the resulting wood fiber is similar to the brown or red tones of sunburn on skin.

The other issue we are dealing with here is: why is “sunburned” wood more susceptible to paint failure, especially on the sunny sides of a house? A paint or stain cannot properly adhere to dead wood fiber. After such wood is coated, the stresses caused by sun on the wood surfaces is such that the coating actually detaches from the substrate, leaving it susceptible to cracking, blistering and complete failure.

How do you deal with the problem: coating removal, partial or complete. The problem with a partial approach is that the coating that does not come off now, will fail later. Depending on the severity of the delaminating, we sometime recommend the complete stripping of the coating. What about the dead wood fiber? It has to be sanded down. Sometimes, the surfaces are so degraded that sanding is not effective. In such cases, we coat the bare wood with a liquid epoxy consolidator, which acts as a replacement for the lignin and binds the wood fibers back together again.

As house painting contractors, we seek to understand the cause of paint failure, so as to prevent future ones from occurring. We call that part of our work as the “forensics of paint failure”.

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Peeling Paint on Gables

On this exterior painting project, a quick look at the front gables does not reveal anything out of the ordinary: just peeling paint; another day in the life of a house painter, right? Not so fast. Look closer. Behind the paint that already peeled, there is the original coating. What is going on here? Is there an adhesion problem?

The top coating seems to be delaminating from the original coating. Why? How extensive is this problem? Is there an adhesion problem here? Those are questions Chicago’s Painting in Partnership needed to answer in order to give its client the best possible paint job.

In order to ascertain the answers to these questions, we did some testing. We applied strips of masking tape over what looked like a perfectly sound, painted surfaces and then yanked them off. Oh my! All the paint comes off! Behind the top layer of the paint was a mildew infestation. This is why the top layer of the paint was failing!

Sound-Looking Painted Surface

Mildew Infestation Underneath the Last Coating

How could this have happened in the first place? The house being fifteen years old, we speculate that the original trim was factory stained and then installed on the house. The house probably sat for months with that factory finish, while the house was being finished on the inside. Before tuning it over to its buyer, we think the house was given a quick coat of paint to “dress things up”, without the proper cleaning of the surfaces and killing the mildew spores. The new coating created darkness and allowed mildew to multiply between the two coatings and eventually cause the paint failure.

To properly execute this exterior house painting project, we had to remove the old paint wherever our tests revealed the mold problem. We used scrapers to remove the failed coating. After the removal process, we killed the mildew and power-washed the surfaces. We then had another round of scraping to remove any paint loosened by the power washing. Finally, we primed all bare wood with an oil primer.

This project exemplifies the care Painting in Partnership invests in every project to ensure the long-term satisfaction of our clients with all the house painting work we do.

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