Brandon Lewis: I’m Brandon Lewis, founder of the Academy of Professional Painting Contractors and publisher of Painters Weekly, and you’re tuned in to Pro Talk. I’m joined today with Mike Balding of Absolute Painting. We’re going to talk about exterior painting for homeowners in Lenexa, Kansas, welcome to the program.
Mike Balding: Thanks for having me on, Brandon. I appreciate it.
Brandon Lewis: Well, let’s get right into it. Lenexa has a very harsh environment, and very very cold winters, very very hot summers. The exterior of your home needs to be protected. Let’s be honest, when people look at your home from the street, they’re really not seeing the home. They’re seeing the paint. That’s what meets 90% of the eye. It’s faded, flaking, or if it’s outdated, that does not make a good expression on guests. One of the quickest way to update your home is through painting.
Brandon Lewis: Three things that are really important for commercial. You had talked to me about some of these previously. The first one’s proper prep work. I mean, that’s where it all starts. Talk about how important that is, and how Absolute Painting makes sure that the process is done properly.
Mike Balding: You’re absolutely right, prep work is key. Most people understand that. Most people who have ever dealt with painting know that if the prep work isn’t done right, the paint job’s not going to last. Specifically, there’s a couple of things you want to look for.
Mike Balding: Number one, the surface has to be clean and free of dirt and dust and debris. That means the home is most likely going to need pressure washed. Just getting out your garden hose and hitting it with your thumb over the nozzle to make a little bit of a stream isn’t enough. You need to have at least 2,700 to 3,000 psi of pressure so that you can remove caked on dirt that’s accumulated over years of just sitting there.
Mike Balding: The other thing that you want to be really aware of is that all of the cracks and holes in your siding, windows, and doors need filled. You want to use a high quality of flexible caulking that will make sure that as the home flexes and stretches when it’s really hot and really cold, that that surface continues to be protected against moisture.
Mike Balding: Finally, the other important thing to consider with prep work is that you have to cover things up that aren’t supposed to be painted. That’s something that our painters excel at is making windows, doors, brick, and covering up important plants and shrubs to make sure that no paint gets on them.
Brandon Lewis: Well that is really important. I mean, you spend all that time in your garden, or if you’ve got a beautiful brick home, once the paint’s on there, it’s virtually impossible to get it off on some substrates, covering those things is important. Because it’s going to be in the middle of this extreme heat and extreme cold, and because you want your painting project to last, you have to select good products. Talk a little bit about product selection and making sure that the right coatings go on the right surface.
Mike Balding: You know the simple way to think about this is not all paints are created equally. You can go into a big box store and you can look at their high end exterior paint and it may not match up to the high end exterior paint you’re going to find in a retail paint store like Sherwin Williams or Benjamin Moore.
Mike Balding: Especially in northeast Kansas, we have a lot of sun and lot of UV exposure on the homes. You can drive around neighborhoods in Lenexa, Kansas, and you’ll see homes that once looked nice, but now are faded and chalky because there wasn’t enough resin in the paint to protect against UV degradation over a longer period of time. The paints that we choose, the high end retail paints, have a lot of resin in them, and we use a satin sheen that helps to protect the color of the home from fading for a longer period of time.
Mike Balding: Choosing products is super important. A lot of times you get what you pay for. It’s better to spend the money on the higher end products ’cause it will make the paint job last a lot longer again.
Brandon Lewis: I agree. I’ve seen people put a lot of labor into a painting project and then two years, three years later when the painting contractor can’t be found or contacted or will not honor a warranty, they’re stuck with the job that’s got half or a third of the life that it should have if they would have just not skimped on the paint. Sometimes homeowners don’t have the time or the energy or the knowledge to know that they’re being sold an inferior product so picking a good one’s important.
Brandon Lewis: Then finally, warranty and guaranty, really important on exterior projects. Some contractors have the out of sight guaranty, which means we’ll stand by it until you can see our taillights pulling around the stop sign at the end of your neighborhood. But you do have issues. Rarely do you have catastrophic issues, but occasionally bubbling, flaking, even when the proper prep is done, depending on what’s happened with the coating underneath it, the lamination. Small issues can happen that you want your contractor to come back and fix.
Brandon Lewis: Sometimes if something really goes wrong, you might need some additional help. You want to make sure there’s a good warranty and a good guaranty behind that work. Talk about what one of those looks like, Mike.
Mike Balding: Yeah, that’s a really important point. At Absolute Painting, we offer a three year warranty against pretty much anything that would happen to the paint. We actually just had an incident earlier this summer where we painted a house at the beginning of the summer. We had a little bit of bubbling on one side. I think it was because there was a little bit of moisture on the surface when the painting was done. Then when the sun hit it, it bubbled just a little.
Mike Balding: Now these people were putting their house on the market, so we sent a painter out on a Sunday afternoon to fix that side and get it all done. Of course, they were really happy that we showed up to do it. That’s really super important.
Mike Balding: We also offer a guaranty that when we paint your house, we’re going to keep painting and keep working until you’re completely 100% satisfied with the job, or the paint that we put on your house is absolutely free. We’ve never had to do that before, but this is something that we give all of our customers so that they can feel confident that they’re getting a really, really good job, and a painting contractor that will stay in their corner even after the house is done and the check’s been written.
Brandon Lewis: Well, that free bank guaranty that you offer is unheard of in our industry. The satisfaction part of it is important because some people will just want a warranty, which is that the stuff will stay on the surface.
Brandon Lewis: However, a big part of getting your home painted is the experience you have. You want people to be respectful. You want it to be timely. You want it to be on budget. You don’t want to have a terrible, harrowing experience. It’s bad enough just having people in your home doing work period, even if it goes perfectly well. It’s still a disruption. Making sure that people are satisfied really matters.
Brandon Lewis: To recap, you’ve got to do the proper prep work. The best products have to go on the surfaces. Finally, you need to make sure that there is some kind of ironclad promise in the form of a warranty or guaranty that you’ll be taken care of.
Brandon Lewis: Mike, this has been a great program. Thank you so much for joining us. We appreciate it.
Mike Balding: Thanks for having me.
Brandon Lewis: All right, I’m Brandon Lewis. I am the founder of the Academy for Professional Painting Contractors, publisher of Painters Weekly. I hope you’ve enjoyed Pro Talk. Until next time, I’m signing off.
