Exterior Painting

The Approval Comes First

On a single family house you paint when you are ready. On a condominium or a small apartment building in Santa Monica, the exterior is usually common area the association owns, and the color is usually something an architectural committee has to vote on. So the first question we ask is not what color you want. It is when your committee meets, and what they need to see.

Working backwards from that date changes the order of everything. Drawdowns go up early so the board can live with them for a week. The scope gets written with its exclusions stated, because a reviewer who cannot tell where the work stops will ask, and asking costs a meeting. Product data sheets go in with the packet rather than after it. None of this is difficult. It is just usually left until the committee sends the submittal back.

Prep Is Most of the Job

It is also most of the cost, and it is the part that is invisible once the last coat is on. Pressure washing to get salt film, chalk and biological growth off the wall. Scraping and feathering failed edges. Routing hairline map cracks in stucco wide enough to hold sealant instead of skinning over it. Caulking the joints where dissimilar materials meet, trim to stucco, window frame to sill, because that joint is where water gets behind the coating.

Primer is not one product. A bonding primer for a chalky or glossy substrate, a stain blocking primer over tannin bleed or water staining, a masonry primer on bare stucco. They are not interchangeable, and the wrong one under a good topcoat still fails.

Coating Choice on Older Stucco

A great deal of Santa Monica stucco dates from the 1920s through the 1970s, and hairline cracking in it is normal rather than alarming. Elastomeric coatings bridge those cracks and they are genuinely good at it. They are also a thick, low permeability film, and on a wall that has no other route to dry, they will hold moisture inside the assembly. On a building with a vapor open interior and no water intrusion history, elastomeric is often right. On one with a history of leaks, or with an interior finish that will not let anything through, a high build acrylic that stays breathable is the safer specification.

That call gets made at the building, not from a product catalogue.

Two Coats, and Why the One Coat Quote Comes Back

Over any color change, two coats. A single coat over a different color leaves an uneven film build that reads as patchy in raking afternoon light, and it fails years earlier on the south and west elevations where the ultraviolet load is highest. A one coat number always looks better on a bid sheet and it is the quote a board regrets approving.

The Marine Layer Runs the Schedule

Surface temperature and dew point decide the working day this close to the water. Coating a wall that is still damp from fog, or laying one down late enough that dew forms before it sets, produces blushing, streaking and poor adhesion. We start on the elevations the sun has reached and we stop earlier in the afternoon than a crew in the valley would. On the coast that is not caution, it is the difference between a coating that lasts and one that has to be redone.

Living There While It Happens

Narrow lots, permit parking on both sides and one loading zone mean staging is planned in advance. Residents get written notice of which elevation is next and when. One entrance stays clear at all times, masking comes down and the site gets swept at the end of each day, and on a pre-1978 building anything we disturb is handled to lead safe practice.

Call (424) 561-9870 for a walkthrough.