Simple Tips To Paint Your House Like Professionals

A clean and fresh paint job has the power to totally transform the look of your home. Auckland painters ensure that your New Zealand home will look like new and is totally weatherproof, in minimum time and at least possible cost to you.

The paint, besides making your home look refined also protects your investment. It shields the house from sun, rain and wind and after 10-15 years the paint can begin to crack and peel and you need to paint it over again.  

When you have to paint the house, it is best to call in a contractor and get the job done professionally. Painting can transform the entire house from mundane to inspiring. It is therefore important to ensure that serious planning goes into deciding colours and shades to be used.

Painting interiors

When you are decorating interiors of your home, color plays a very important role. Paint gives life to bland walls. The right colour choice and correct painting techniques add texture and dimension to walls so that they stand out. There are many colours that you can chose from, choice of colour depends on the amount of natural light, windows and gloss level in the space.

Painting exteriors

Cleaning and sanding the surface properly before painting is crucial, if applied over moss or mould, dirt or damp the paint won’t last. These are things that determine how long your painted exterior walls can last. Thorough scrubbing is a must prior to painting the exterior surface. Scrubbing removes dirt and residues of broken down paint, which may otherwise keep the fresh coat of paint from adhering to the walls.

Whether it’s the interior or exterior, painting preparation needs to be spot on, so here are a few tips you can keep in mind to paint like a pro.

Clean walls to make the paint last longer

It is really important to prepare properly before a paint job. Painting exterior walls is a pretty straight forward exercise, but most often overlook the importance of cleaning the house before painting. Scrub the walls thoroughly, make sure they are clean and sand to take any remaining dirt and gloss off, if this done the paint will adhere to the walls for a longer time. 

Primer is a must before paint

No matter how tempted you are to paint topcoats directly you must know that using a primer is essential, and it must be applied to the walls before painting the topcoats or finish coats. Primer is important because it provides a key for the topcoats and can also enhance the true color of the topcoat.

Know how much paint to use

Being economical does not mean choosing inexpensive paint; it means to utilize the quantity of paint so that you’re not wasting any unused paint. Here is a tried and true formula for working out paint quantities for your job. Professionals recommended paint coverage is around 12 square meters per liter. You must remember that rough, unclean or untrimmed surfaces may require more paint.

Use a roller

Painting the walls can be time consuming. To be more professional and to cover your painting task much faster, use a paint roller instead of a paint brush. You will not only finish with a better texture but also in half the time.  

How to Restore Real Hardwood Furniture

Whether it’s a cherished family heirloom or a great garage sale find, real hardwood furniture can take a beating over time. While hardwood is amazingly durable, it’s also paradoxically vulnerable to age and abuse. Crackled finishes, water stains, and other imperfections can occur due to daily use or misuse. Here are some tips for bringing back its luster and life.

Assessing the Situation

Are you sure your hardwood furniture really needs restoration? Sometimes years of gunk and grime buildup can make a piece of furniture look a lot worse off than it really is. Give it a good cleaning first so that you can get an accurate picture of the damage.

Before you can clean it, however, you need to know what type of finish it is. The furniture’s finish will determine the type of cleaning method you need to use. You should be especially careful of finishes that you suspect may be antique, as disturbing the natural age on these types of pieces can destroy their value.

Restoring a Finish

If you’ve determined the furniture’s finish and given it a good cleaning accordingly, and find that it does indeed need further attention, it could be that the finish needs touching up or total reapplication. If it’s not an antique or you’re not concerned about value, or if you don’t want to match the finish, you can simply remove the existing finish by sanding and then refinish as you like.

If you do want to match or blend the existing hardwood furniture finish, however, you’ll have a bit of extra work to do. If the problem is cracking in the finish, you can usually re-amalgamate it using either denatured alcohol, lacquer thinner or a combination of the two. Furniture finished with varnish will most likely need to be completely stripped and refinished. Note that re-amalgamation only works for restoring the finish itself; scratches that run into the wood require more intense methods.

Removing Water Stains

Moisture can lead to a white or milky “stain” on hardwood furniture. This can be an isolated occurrence, such as a beverage being set down without a coaster, or it can occur throughout the piece after being in a high-humidity environment. You can usually remove surface water stains by rubbing the affected areas thoroughly with an oil polish.

If that doesn’t work, try using a mild abrasive paste such as toothpaste, baking soda or a bit of No. 0000 steel wool to gently rub the area. Clean the area completely, use dab of mild solvent to smooth the finish, and then apply a good coat of wax or other finishing polish that’s appropriate to the type of finish you have.

A good piece of hardwood furniture can be an excellent asset in any home, from functional, design and value perspectives alike. Before trying any restoration techniques on your furniture, be sure that you know what you’re dealing with and that you’re not destroying any value of the piece by tampering with it. When you’re confident in your understanding, go ahead and make the piece your own — custom restored to your unique tastes.

Why Smart Homeowners Hire Professional Painters

Homeowner’s today search for contractors, equipped with necessary skills and knowledge to conduct a wide range of painting services. Be it surface preparations (clean-up) or applying quality paint on the surface, we feel the need of hiring professional painters for performing such tedious task. 

Painting is highly a labor-intensive work that involves great amount of care during the process. So, don’t go for hiring amateur painting students who are not aware of nitty-gritties of this job. This write-up next describes why you should choose a professional over an inexperienced painter (new learner) for coloring your dream home project.

 Benefits of hiring a professional

1. Hiring a licensed painting contractor offers many advantages to a property owner.  Such professionals are well equipped with tools and have the know-how of delivering quality paint jobs. You might find it difficult choosing the right color combinations or paint brands, but a professional can guide you in the right direction. Such small advices can prove very beneficial in the long-term as they offer long lasting solutions and eliminate the need to re-paint frequently. 

2. Different house structure need different types of paint materials and the use of varying painting techniques. Only a professional painter is capable of providing smooth finish both on your exteriors and interiors.

3. The process of painting not just involves a coat of paint, but many processes like primer coating on walls and furniture at initial stages. Completing paint work is not simply a cake-walk as it appears to be. The technique of brushing up your walls requires in-depth knowledge of craftsmanship. Only a top notch painting professionals can handle some of the expert paint tools.

4. Painting Services from amateurs or inexperienced painters can save some pennies in your pocket, but also leads to recurring costs of re-painting.   

5. Painting experts have experience in painting numerous types of residential and commercial projects. They have the ability to solve any complex issue, which can be encountered during the process of house renovation. They have a package of almost ready-to-deploy painting solutions, which otherwise may require you to hire a consultant in the middle/later-on stages. 

Time Saving

Most of us start feeling embarrassed when we think of painting our rooms. All your ongoing work needs to be halted at once. It involves movement of luxurious items, large wooden blocks (wardrobe and study table) and other things to make space for performing paint related activities. 

But with professionals Auckland painters on your side, you can get the job done in very short periods. They take care of all your items that need to be relocated. So, you need not to worry about ongoing work. 

Saves Cost

Paint and color consultation can be done anytime with a contractor. Instead of exercising DIY (do it yourself) options, all your concerns are addressed by the painting professionals as they emerge. In addition to quality work being done at your home, you will be provided with free maintenance tips. The warranty of work will just assures you about free repair services in nearby future.

Key Benefits of Water Blasting Service that cannot be ignored

Gone are the days when people used soft cloths to remove gum stains from a wall surface. Nowadays, innovative methods of surface cleaning are available and water-blasting happens to be one of the best.

Water blasting is a cleaning technology that uses high pressure water streams to remove algae, stains and even membranes of concrete from a surface. It is also known as hydro-cleaning, hydro-blasting, water-jetting or high pressure cleaning.

When highly pressurized water is used to remove concrete material from ground, wall or roof surface during house cleaning in Auckland, it is termed as Hydro demolition. Water blasting services offer a range of benefits at nominal charges. Some of the benefits are given below:

1.  It offers finest cleaning of glasses, wooden surfaces, tiles and roofs in a low budget.

2.  Water blasters can easily remove oil stains, organic material and moss from pathways, boundary walls and interior decorative items.

3.     Gives a refreshing look to your exteriors without breaking fragile items, if any.

4.     Capable of cleaning all areas of a house, shop or multi-storey building.

5.     Nominal charges as compared to other traditional methods of surface cleaning.

6.     A fast and effective method for cleaning all structures quickly and effectively.

7.   No use of chemicals ensures makes water blasting services perfect for cleaning archaeological material and other antiques.

8.   Quickest removal of hard to visible items such as chloride from surface without causing any serious damage.

9.   Widely used in under construction buildings to remove any unwanted concrete material before applying tiles on floor or paint on walls.

10. You need not contact different professionals for performing water blasting operations in different house areas.

11.  Professionals guarantee clients for their quality of work.

12. It’s eco-friendly. Water blasting creates almost negligible dust and noise pollution during the cleaning activity. So, it’s largely beneficial for medical patients living in your house.  

Now, even aquaculture Industry has adopted water blasting as a preferred technique for removing algae from fish nets. Some of the benefits to fisheries industry are given below:

1. Maintains the water flow through nets installed on water body’s surface.

2. Reduces operating cost and amount of time required for a net change.

3. Protects small fishes from predators such as jellyfish.

4.    It only removes marine growth while maintaining the original surface profile intact.

Get in touch with a credible water blasting service in your area to see how effective this technique really is. House washing in Auckland or elsewhere with such services is an easy chore! 

Commercial Painting Services: Qualities to Look For

Undeniably, commercial painting projects are reasoned to have the involvement of a professional service with the engagement of qualified expertise, budget allocation and various other wider factors that needs to be considered. However, before selecting a professionally qualified hand for a commercial painting service, there are certain factors or qualities that must be considered well as a priority.

Check for Safety Measures Taken by the Company  

Preferring a professional hand surely means that you bear no cost of insurances in case anything goes wrong with the project or with the workmen. For this very reason, it is important that the hired painting service providers use proper safety measures and work with licensed protection and security equipment.

 Check for Past Work Experience

Unlike, residential properties, commercial painting projects have different requirements, which make the importance of an experienced painting service provider a necessity. With an experienced hand, you need not worry about getting the right estimates, and also be assured of the work quality.

An experienced service hand will be efficient in project management and assure a satisfactory outcome.  

 Look for Flexible Service Providers

Hiring painting service providers means you have many choices this is why selecting one that offers flexible services is advisable. They are the ones who value the importance of your time and agree to work as per desired work schedules.

Service providers should also take care of supervising projects and also guarantee to create safe work environment.

Proper Working Relationship

Because commercial property painting will be done during commercial hours, interaction between your staff and the painters is inevitable.  Therefore, make sure that there should not be any disparity between the friendliness of your staff and painters, which could otherwise lead to disputes and reduce the efficiency of both.

Gain insight into the company’s team and examine how much co-operation they will extend to your workforce.

Transparent Quotation

One of the most important factors that distinguish a good painting service provider is whether they offer transparent quotation or not. Ideally, Auckland painters should offer quote on the spot after inspection, one that is precise and to the point. In case there is dilly dallying with the quote, and no demarcations of costs, maybe you’re hiring the wrong service provider. After all, painting commercial properties is going to cost you a hefty amount.

Test for Knowledge and ask for Recommendations

If in the past also, you have got commercial properties painted, you’ll have a fare idea about the kind of expenditure to be incurred and the kind of services to expect. Do ask relevant questions before hiring painters. If you’re working with a service provider for the first time, it’s best to ask for recommendations.

Check for cleanliness and Appearance

The best way to judge how painters work is to visit the sight of their current project. Check out how organized or disorganized they are; whether they take care of cleanliness or keep the place filthy and shoddy. If such is the case, they may end up damaging the property, especially the floors and the walls.