Problems Faced By Our Painters & How We Overcome

To help people understand that painting is not as easy as rolling some paint on a wall or cutting in some trim, I thought I would share a few problems we run into.

#1 – The Customer Does Not Like The Color They Picked

I do try and help clients pick their colors, but I stay clear of a hard recommendation. Often we have half or more of a place painted before the customer sees it and realizes they do not like the color. We then have to explain that it’s not only a few gallons of wasted paint, but it’s also the time to run, get the new paint, and repaint the areas already painted. This sometimes causes a bit of heat, but there is nothing that can be done about it at that point. The best way to prevent this is for the client to get a small sample and put it on a few areas in each room. At different times of the day, the light will affect the color a lot. Natural light on a sunny day is different than a cloudy day and the artificial lights at night make the color look completely different yet again. This all goes for interior jobs as well as exterior. 

#2 – We Cannot Reach An Area To Paint It

I don’t know how many times over the last 30 plus years we have had to get creative to paint those hard to reach areas. Now that the statute of limitations is up, I can share what I think may be the dumbest thing I ever did. At the age of 18, I was painting an old 3 story duplex and could not figure out how to get at a bit of trim above a roof line. So, I placed one ladder against the wall, tied a second to it, and another to that…  nuts right? 

We have since figured out safer and better ways to get at those hard to reach areas such as renting specialty lifts, using extension poles, and other specialty tools. 

#3 – We Find Rotted Wood 

While painting exterior areas, it is not at all uncommon to come upon a rotten board or two. 

Most of our teams can change out a simple trim board or kick plate, but if the rotten wood is thick or requires more skill than a simple straight cut and a few nails the paint team may not have the tools on hand to efficiently address the problem. What to do now? Well, we have that cover with our in-house carpenter. His schedule is light and he is flexible, so he can usually get out there in a day or, at a maximum, two days to button up any light carpentry that is needed. 

#4 – Repair Of  Stucco, EIFS & Tuck Pointing

Often, when doing the estimate, we will include options for things we see like damaged stucco or a few bad mortar joints that need to be repointed, but sometimes we cannot see the damaged areas until we start washing and scraping the building. Once they become apparent, we can jump on them with our in-house carpenter or outsource it to our EIFS repair partner if the patch is more than we can handle.    

#5 – Bees 

Oh, the hazards of mother nature! Usually, a can of wasp & hornet spray will do the trick, but a few times we found a hornet mud-nest the size of a basketball. This called for an exterminator and held up the job for 3 days. 

#6 – Painting Drive-thru Areas On QSR “Quick Serve Restaurants”

So, we have painted over 4000 McDonald’s and 1500 Burger King restaurants and most of them would not shut down the drive-thru service to have the buildings painted. This meant that we had to paint them with cars driving within a few feet from where we were painting. We tried doing them at night to avoid this problem, but that just provided another problem. Once the evening dew set in, the paint ran off the roof. To make things worse, the soffit lights would draw gnats that got stuck in the wet paint on the soffits. This meant that we would be painting them all in the daytime while open. When we started, we got overspray on 5 cars per building, of course we built in all the car detailing cost as part of our pricing. By the time we were done the first 500 roofs, we had perfected our system and got over spray on only 1 car every 5-6 stores. How? We cut pressure and use special tips that do not atomize the paint as much. Since we back roll, we just needed to get the paint on the roof in the general area. We also waited to paint the drive-thru during their non-peak hours and had a painter stop cars for a minute or two at a time to keep them at least 10 feet from where we are spraying.