plainpainter

Rick, check this out - this is a link to my Aunt's Brewery in Northern France. It's all in French - but you can nagivate easily especially to the page to all the different beers. Brasserie De Clerck SITE OFFICIEL, bières de Picardie, bière Colvert, Poppy... I haven't been there in ages - but it's kind of cool getting all the beer you want in your Aunt's backyard.

Scott - I know amiens well - I wouldn't agree that it's not scenic. But true French countryside is very reminiscent of farming prairies

Beth - I mistakenly bought one of those 9xxx series makita grinders with the 10,000 rpm speed. My nephew glazed the wood in spots - and then showed him how to keep it moving. As long as you keep it moving around - it doesn't close the grain - it's just a whole heck of a lot harder to use. But now it's spinning so fast - your forced to buff a lot of area fast! And that makes my labor rates go up. You just can't buff spindles very easily with the speed

Rick - here is a pic of my cousin, Josephine, she's posing next to a vat - she runs the restaurant/pub/cafe now. And if you scroll down here are the beer jellies they are pushing now. Imagine that toast in the morning with beer jelly? LOL.les gelees a la biere de la brasserie de clerck, a peronne - PicardieResto

Too much fighting in that family - I wouldn't last a day there - and my aunt is cheap. Here is a pic of their vats.... Brasserie De Clerck - fabrication de bières et visite guidée de la brasserie - bière de péronne

Here is a deck I did in the next to me, North Andover MA. This was a heck of a job - I replaced railings, stringer boards, 1x5 trim boards on the bulkhead door and a few pieces of baseboard cap. Of course homeowner didn't want to pay for spindles to be restored - as they have two full coats of ATO on them - but all the railings, posts, and stringer boards were a peeling mess - so can you imagine pressure washing between those spindels to try and remove paint on the top sides of the stringer boards? It's not fun - especially when after scraping afterwards all the exposed wood got a penetrating wood preserver treatment, then were oil primed, and then finally a couple of coats of latex paint. The floorboards are Mahogany that I totally restored, sanded, etc. Two coats of A.C. semisolid, special mix I came up with. As well homeowner didn't like peeling concrete foundation after deck was stained - so that fun grinding the paint off after deck was already stained. So - here are photos of what we came to this morning - I think this is like week #4 between all the rain - and the many trips between steps of prep.

oooops - I guess that makita grinder I picked up for the osborne brush was way overkill - no wonder why the thing didn't last!

Mathew - I don't have any worries - I will be pounding the pavement soon again. I have more ideas - it's just a really hard fight this year - I am getting worn out by the fighting. Man I will never look a gift-horse, like the 90's, in the mouth again.

Definitely get the lift

Jeff I haven't seen any exterior painting sales since '07 - so I won't even go there. My interior painting sales are down this year by 4k. But then again I only had one big interior job last year. I had a newspaper classified ad circulated among 350,000 customers that I did 18k+ from last year - this year $350 so far. So I am down 22k in sales. Yet when I look over my numbers from last year, if I have no more work from now til Sept. 6 I will only be down 5k. So I have recouped 17k of my 22k in losses from other forms of new advertizing this year. So I would say the bulk of my problem was the heavy reliance on one form of advertizing that has had a 100% drop in sales. I believe this reflects the demographic that uses this advertizing to acquire services. Not that I haven't had tremendously wealthy clients use this advertizing as well. But the upside is that through a strong motivation to acquire customers from other sources of advertizing - I was able to pull it off. I've been able to increase my marketing each year now for 3 years - but not necessarily my sales. But I am still in the 'game'.

....offer warranties on services that you don't have any real control over after you leave? I like to think my services are superior - but even this trex deck that I ridded of every last bit of mildew last summer - had plenty of regrowth a year later. And some of my housewashes look great 2 years later - and some look awful and need to rewashed. I cannot exert any control of what happens after I leave anymore than a carwash can exert any control on how long your car will stay clean after you leave. So why do guys give warranties on house washing? To me it seems gimicky - I can guarantee a house will be clean when I am done. Imagine giving some warranty to a ignorant homeowner that gets a bout of artillery fungus a year later - try explaining how that isn't covered. To me ethically - you wash a house, rid it of any molds, algae, and pollution. And the second you leave - the whole process starts all over again. If guys are truly honoring their warranties - then they are giving up half of their business. It's that simple.

For my personal stuff - I use that Cretowood product now on new pressure treated - and let it age. I can't sell it to homeowners - as they don't understand the benefits as their deck will still get moldy and grey - cosmetically it looks like I did nothing to the wood. But it preserves the integrity of the inner wood - allowing the wood to age on the surface without worrying about wood cracking, checking and cupping.

Ken - if you got a warranty going that's one thing - you've figured out an angle. The majority of guys I am being told second hand by homeowners are telling me that everything is covered. And if I were to do something like this - it would be a 'gold' plan as well - as in at least the north side of the roof gets washed, gutters get cleaned out - and have to be maintained by me twice a year for the duration - and a couple of other things. Then I would consider a warranty - but I ain't giving a warranty for a $375 'basic' house wash - that's what some guys are doing. As well - I'd have to take notes of other potential work on property - if there wasn't any upside like no pavers, flagstone, concrete pool apron - or anything else - then to me a house like that wouldn't be a good investment. But I totally see where are going with this - using warranties as an oppurtunity for upselling. It's just these other guys are truly giving dumb warranties, just giving them out for the sake of closing a job.

Ughh - brand new pressure treated - you want to stain it to prevent it from weathering and mildew getting in the wood. But I personally haven't found anything that lasts on brand new ptp. Even timberoil didn't penetrate new pressure treated deck railing I installed last year.

why would you remove the primer?????

I'll second the pita factor for milk paint - who'd have thunk that casein proteins have the sticking power of crazy glue?!?! Diedrich is some nice product - really potent stuff. If you put a burm and collection tarps around the home - all you do is pressure wash the stuff off and collect the stuff off the ground - and then package it up and throw it away - no need to worry about fine lead particulate getting into the air.

No pleasing you Rick, btw - that's semisolid stain. I've put down millions of latex and oil solid stains on decks - and they totally obstruct the grain of the wood - you can still the grain with this product.

I can make pretty much the same color in the semi-transparent line as well - it will be interesting to see how that comes out.

Opacity aside - what do you think of the custom color I came up with?

Perhaps - but it isn't about us, it's about the customer. You and like that variation between lighter and darker boards such as in that photo. Yet customers question about uneveness? You see - what we like as 'woodies' and what the homeowner/customer expects/likes are two different things. My customer is absolutely fanatic about how this deck came out - so if he's happy, I am happy. And as well - folks want me to put a 2 year warranty in writing on their horizontals, I am putting the toughest most durable product I can find - and I think a 2-coat semisolid approach in New England is my best bet. Rick, after Mother Nature New England Style has given that deck a good rashing of it's first winter - you'll see a whole heck a lot more grain. Trust me. I hate to say it - but I am drifting over towards more opacity in my wood work. Folks in New England are unrealistic about longevity - you can't give 'em 2 yr. warrantees with toners or sem-trans type stains. Yet they don't seem to dislike the semisolid look either - so I am going with the flow......got a latex solid stain restoration coming up - LOL - be posting photos when that happens - LOL

God no. I banged off the 'stringer' board or the bottom railing, which was half rotted - and then took off the half rotted 1-3/4 trellis board, and they were all dangling as they were still nailed in from the top railing. then I got a piece of treillis and the bottom fir railing cut a foot longer at the lumber yard - then creto'd them, came back a day later, primed them with oil primer, then a few days later gave them a coat of latex. When they were finally ready to install - I measure between the posts, and then I took the 1-3/4 trellis and cut is slightly long on my mitre/chop saw. Then I go and fit it - if it's too long, I put back in mitre saw and shave a tiny bit off - did that like 3 times before got the perfect length. then I borrowed a friends small nail gun that shoots those tiny brads - and went on the outside of the deck, fitted the trellis to bottom of the spindles and tried my best to shoot up through the trellis board into the bottom of the spindles by aiming at a 45 degree angle. Once I got them all nailed in. I cut the bottom railing 'stringer' board and fitted it, it saw perhaps two trips back to the mitre saw for a slight shaving - as I don't like to cut boards 'short'. And then when I had the right length - I fitted it right under the trellis board {now the spindles move as one unit back and forth} and once the stringer board was carefully centered between the posts - I shot nails through the stringer into the posts. So now I am able to go back and shoot nails at the base of each spindle back down into stringer board - and everything is now one tight unit.

What I call stringers - are those boards between the posts parallel to the railings but at the bottom {i.e. where the spindles are resting on} I didn't touch those spindles at all - I didn't even really put any cleaner when I was blasting the paint off with my pressure washer, for fear it would remove stain - I just sprayed water and cleaned the mildew that way - basically everything that is white in that photo I had removed 50% of the previous paint - I cut primer and paint with a 2" cutting brush between every single one of those darn spindles! As to the caulking - if you look carefully at those boards that the spindles are sitting on, it's not a single piece of wood. Those 'railings' are really a sister/brother piece made from fir - one is machined with a bevel for the top piece - and the bottom piece is machined flat - because they first run a single strap of 1-3/4 trellis along the tops and bottom of the spindles and then the top and bottom {stringer} railings get nailed around that. Anyways when you look along the bottom railing boards you see this enormous crack that runs the whole length - so it gets caulked. Where the railings meet the posts - that's another area that gets caulked - especially since I replaced two of those railing pieces, even though they I pre-painted them - they still got caulked after installation. As well I replaced a few baseboard caps in those panels surrounding the bulkhead - and all those cracks needed caulking as well.

I disagree - after the first coat the deck was extremely splotchy and uneven looking - Jake assured me that his product would even out by itself - but I am not willing to take that risk right now. As well I did this all with a lambswool applicator - I didn't blindly put a second coat everywhere. The deck sat in hot sun for like an hour before it got a second application - and areas where stain was still sitting, it got pushed around with the lambswool over to areas that were dry - and dry areas got topcoated. And everywhere got back brushed so everywhere the coat was even. Sadly - almost 4 gallons went into this wood - and just for fun I put a few drops on it today, and it still will absorb more stain. There were some boards that were dark wood mahogany and others that were as light as pine almost - this stain with two coats made everything look even. As well I let my nephew break every rule in the book, walking over areas that haven't been stained allowing the applicator to leave a trails of drops everywhere in the hot direct sun and letting it sit for 15+ minutes, and the deck still came out perfect.

That's the thing, Ken, what's you get involved in these kinds of jobs - you can't even spend 8 hours each time you go - I have probably 3+ days where I worked taking apart rotted wood - then left - then back another day and cut a bunch of pieces of wood - primed them - left them on saw horses - rains in between - then 5-6 days later - I am back to give them a first coat of paint, while they are still on saw horses. I think once you introduce on element of a deck that has paint on it - it's like throwing a stick into the cogs, everything is F'd up from that point on - nothing is simple. So is it worth it? If I had volume, this is the first job I would start turning down - but this season being what it is, I can't turn anything down now. Not to mention I would need someone with carpentry skills to replace me doing the carpentry. Then there is the problem with painting - you need someone who knows how to paint to go and cut all those risers in without tarps or taping and do it efficiently - again that is someone who has skills, and someone I can't find. If I had 3 jobs like this in close proximity - I could bounce between all 3 each day - that would make things better.

Here are some photos after the job was FINALLY finished - really just comprised of touching up all areas where stain got on paint - fullcoating of stair risers - finally painting bulkhead - and tops of all rails and posts - and touching up stringer boards where I had caulked all these gaps with 48+ hour cure elastomeric caulking. Uggh - but it is pretty.