plainpainter

What recession? D.J. Carrol of EasyPro Property Services says there is no recession. It's all in our minds.

better flowing trigger guns -

Says so right here, interesting if it were true? Removing Severe Mildew: Linseed Oil Paint Case Study

perhaps not all linseed oils are equal, Rod? Perhaps with them removing the protein vs. what is available here typically in the states is different? I have an open mind. Then again modern alkyds aren't 'natural' anymore - yet mildew grows on most modern oil based paints

Well, Michael, at least this thread shows that you have just more than a passing interest to trying to get your pricing up there. I certainly don't have everything figured out - but I know there is a way

I've been on some decks that could have used 3 coats of stain, even A.C. semisolid. But there is a point where I stop - customer pays for two coats, that is what they get. I'll slosh on two really heavy coats to drench wood, if I have to. But it stops at 2 coats.

12th grade english teacher, my arse! Whatever you say Mr. surficants and aggitation.

I totally agree - I am just saying if you get caught like me with your pants down, a.k.a. no sprayer available, and you have to resort to brushing - I line the underside of the railings with cardboard. That's how my nephew and I have been doing things - he's on one side of the railing, I am on the other and we're both attacking it with 6" stain brushes. Not the most efficient way of doing things - but I'd definitely not put a tarp under if doing this technique. Again - every time I sprayed - the overspray actually always helped get the ball rolling with getting stain on the deck. Two years ago I learned this while putting down a very thinned product California's Storm stain - I ended up overspraying the entire decking from when I was spraying the outsides of the railings with overspray getting all over the decking {small 12x12 deck} This actually helped with saturation - as it settled and made for a better final appearance with the second coat sprayed on the decking.

So you price according to what you see others price, eh? Monkey see, monkey do business philosophy? Michael - what you don't understand is that those guys are big players - have volume beyond your wildest dreams and also know how to upsell big time gutter installations to offset cost. Those pricings you see are well calculated marketing strategies. At some point you'll figure out that the 'going' rate is also the going out of business rate. I won't touch a gutter cleaning for less than $150 - unless there is a big time service agreement for multiple cleanings per year, and I can get the whole neighborhood to go along. Learn to market and sell to a higher end clientale - and you won't have to worry about what the 'market' is out there. This is where guys like you and me diverge - your reasoning starts out with the assumption that a job is doable - and you have to price to be competitive. I start out looking at figures and facts - and come to a conclusion that the 'going' rate won't pay my bills - so I look for other lines of work or learn how to get pay people to pay my price. That's the difference between a 'technician' {someone who knows how to do the job} and a businessman {someone who knows how to market the job for loads more money} Like I said - your pricing is a disgrace - I washed a customers house and restored her deck. It was a small house - I blew out her gutters with 4 inches of compressed leaves and pine needles with my pressure washer for $67 front and backside. The price was double if I hand scooped. Took me 15 minutes between wrestling a 24' ladder front and backside and blowing the stuff out. They of course were responsible for picking up the mess. Don't worry - you don't know the future - in the face of guys like you - there is always an enterprising business minded guy that is going to paint a pretty face to service, be double or triple your price and take all your business away from you as you cry and lament about how they're so much more expensive and why would they hire them over you!

I saw this guy for the first when posting how expensive we all were with our gutter cleaning pricing - so I did some research and found this thread as well...He is just like I suspected he would be. Michael - your logic for raising pricing is ridiculous - you make grammatic errors comparable to 1st graders - why would anyone respect you to pay you good money? If you aren't a bottom-feeder, nobody is. Folks in D.C. have loads of money, your pricing is a disgrace.

You would think we're way too expensive - your pricing is such a shame to this industry. Right from your site.... Gutter cleaning most homes $79!House washing as low as $219!Deck washing as low as $99!Dryer vent cleaning $79!Gutter cleaning, residential, for $49 , If included on contract with any power washing service!!!

Beth - you use an airless, correct? You don't need to tarp when using an airless. But if you are sloshing on stain with 6 inch brushes and getting tons of stain on the deck - you better use tarping. Again - I don't think you hand brush all your railings, I had to do that because my airless was in the shop - A.C. on a hot day just dribbles everywhere.

I don't get it - the pictures of the sanded cedar look great - yet the stained photo looks really bad with furries. Does ReadySeal kick up the grain on cedar? Rick the reason I ask if you use an osborn brush - is that I found that the furries are just the erosion of mostly spring grain - and yet it takes forever to sand down the 'peaks' of the summer grain to get far enough down to sand the spring grain flat. With the osborn brush - it kind of gets into the crevices and knocks all the furries out - without having to get all the summer grain peaks down level with the spring grain. Anyways - just thought I'd let you know about that - as the few times I came into contact with either Fir or Cedar - the furries were out of control - and no amount of sanding seem to get rid of them.

Is it me or do the 'furries' look awful in that first pic? Rick - you have an osborne brush? Are you going to sue the lady with the Sh!t-Sue dog?

Beth tarping underneath railings or not is a function of how long the floors will go before getting stained. If you are going to brush railings and hours will go by before staining the floors - you have to tarp. I taught my nephew how to brush - we used 5 and 6 inch staining brushes - and if I didn't tarp, there would be tons of drops everywhere. Now if I ever get my airless back - that's a different story. As long as all the sides of the home are tarped and I have my tarp covering one side of my railings - I can spray miles of railings without having to tarp the floor - as it won't be long before I spray out the floors. I learned last year - after using a locally produced stain - that if you stain all the railings and let overspray hit the floorboards - you've done half your job of staining floors - so that leveraged time. And just a quick light spray in the middle areas. And the floor boards were good to go with a second more saturating coat for a more even finish.

When you have a happy couple wed on March 18th of this year - and 6 months later the bride's body is found all mutilated and stuffed in a suitcase in a dumpster - and the groom shot his brains out in a hotel room north of the border? Are we still on planet Earth? When things got 'rocky' in my relationships, usual course of events was that I got dumped - parted ways - never to see each other ever again. What's so hard about that?

*******! Lol

I did this trex washing last year - typical hand brushing with good strength bleach and detergents. It was really bad - included lichens on the handrails on top of the deep seated mildew. Anyways - customer calls for a 'maintenance' washing - so this time it's all downstreamed. I couldn't believe how bad the mildew had gotten in a year's time. They thought it still looked pretty good - even I thought so - but when the bleach started going on and I started looking closer in certain corners - it was downright ugly! Some areas needed 5-6 consecutive applications - a few spots were so bad they didn't come out at all! And this was just a year after I brushed the entire decking and got it spotless! I would have never thought that even on trex - that the mildew would have returned so soon?

Scott there is a homeowner that posted photos of his deck after stripping sanding and then using penofin - I think he showed pics like 2 months later - and the finish is practically gone. He just posted them in the last couple of weeks.

What you describe is pretty similar to what I stated - take your poly and instead put the spar urethane instead and that's the basis to a pretty kicking exterior stain. Cleaning experiments is one thing - I have a ton going on - as it's hard sometimes to swallow paying $50 for 5 lbs of stripper - when you can make 50 lbs for the same price. But I really really just don't want to mess with stain compositions - it's so hard to predict what will happen. And tung oil resins as found in spar urethanes - are so freakin tough, when it comes time to strip - it's so freakin hard to strip. But you have a point - Ipe does not need protection - but unlike all the other woods, we aren't trying to protect the ipe's integrity - but instead trying to preserve a certain finished look that appeals to homeowners more than just silvered wood. And something that will preserve this finished appearance longer will perhaps earn better customer retention.

Scott - all the best stains out there went to higher solids type finishes. Now if you are Jake Clark, this actually translates to a higher quality finish - but most these other guys just flushed their product with more softer curing resins in an effort to meet the VOC laws and maintain brushability - so the results are disasterous. But A.C. has too much of a good thing in terms of their penetrant oil base in their product - great for very well aged Mahogany - but IPE is still to rock hard. I hate to say this - but you need to take a product like Bakers and add a pint or so of Helmsman Spar urethane to each gallon.

Scott - if it was me - to get a stain to last long on ipe - I would kill it with OX - and then use a 'through' drying type tung oil based stain, something that dries rock hard. As you know from painting - the older lead style oil based paints dried enamel hard - and on top of original growth dense wood, house paint jobs lasted forever. Now we have 'marshmallow' growth wood - so paints have to flexible in order to last.

ipe is a hard animal to deal with, Scott, I hope I never get stuck with the stuff. Not that it needs staining to protect it like Rick and Jim have pointed out - but it will lose it's nice coating. I will definitely be upfront with folks thinking that anything over 9-12 months of longevity is possible

I am seriously considering charging for estimates on decks that are more than $2,500. Not only do I have a big loss rate with decks that size - even when I get them, when something goes wrong - it gets multiplied by the size of the deck. Landing a $5,000 job gives me a false sense of job security. Not to mention - they are attached to 5,500 SF homes with a couple of Lexus' in the driveway - and for some reason these folks are looking to save money. And to a certain amount I think the restoration/maintenance costs for large decks are absurd - and I would never build anything that large to maintain. Give me 14x16 decks all day long - and let my competition get tied up with the big disasters, even when bid right - they're losers, imo.

I prefer doing the latter decks.