We recently began work on a family compound featuring a large three-story hundred-year-old farmhouse with a recent one-story addition, wrap-around porch, lots of shutters, etc.; an interesting job.
Our part of the project was to lightly prep and repaint a detached residence on the same property, a rambling barn structure with an apartment.
Here are the 'Before' images:
We are in process with scrape/spot color prime, and applying one full coat to all previously painted Barn exterior surfaces. Will post After pics when we can!
We recently completed the first phase of preparation and painting work on a fine old farm house exterior in Chatham New York. Most of the work involved carefully scraping off old peeling paint and collecting and disposing of the material.
During meetings with the client we explained that we could commit to completing the following tasks on the house exterior before the end of the 2009 painting season:
Remove mildew and grime from house exterior surfaces
Remove window shutters
Scrape peeling paint areas
Apply color-tinted oil based primer to scraped areas
We did this work on an hourly basis, giving the owner an estimate that the above tasks will take an approximate amount of hours, and actually completed the work in a shorter time frame. The owner had some painting work performed on his barn by a nephew, and we gave him the option of allowing the nephew to continue under our supervision, if he would prefer.
Once we were underway, we gave him a projection of the costs for the following:
- topcoat entire house to same/similar color scheme
- topcoat entire house to different color scheme
We pointed out that a value change of several shades lighter or darker can require one or two extra coats to achieve full opacity.
This phase of the work was completed well in advance of the end of the painting season.
More pics...
Consequently, marbling is almost entirely executed in paint and in body colours. Glazes are used to add depth and translucency where required, and water colour is sometimes used for the sake of its rapid drying.
White Marble. The simplest marble to execute, and at the same time one of the most difficult to imitate faithfully, is white or Sicilian marble. The ground required for this marble is a dead white. When the ground is dry and hard, a thin coat of zinc white in oil is rubbed over it, and the veins are put in with a crayon ; a warm grey crayon is used for the inner veinings, and a soft black lead pencil or black conte crayon for the more prominent ones. The spaces between the veins are then tinted slightly with grey and green, and a few touches of yellowish grey, all very sparingly used, and the whole softened with the hog hair softener.
Sienna Marble. Sienna marble is next in importance, and is much used for columns, pilasters, and staircase walls. The same ground is used as for the white marble, and while this is still wet it is irregularly painted with two or three tints of yellowish cast, made from white and raw Sienna. The veins are then put in either with a black crayon or charcoal, or a soft lead pencil, and softened into the ground. When this is dry, additional shadows, &c., are glazed in in raw Sienna and burnt Sienna, and the veins are emphasised with a little blue or lake. Over all a few white veins or spots are run, and a few lights put on in the interstices between the dark veins.
Italian pink marble is used in place of Sienna, and is about the same depth of tone, but pink, as its name implies. The ground required is the same as above. The ground is scumbled over with pink, made from ochre and Venetian red, and ochre and vermilion, and shaded in with greyer tones. The veins are put in with purplish red, and the whole blended and softened with the hog-hair softener. After all, a few white veins crossing the deep ones, and a few blotches of white, with here and there rose pink glazings, are added.
Black and gold is a popular marble for skirtings, and string courses, chimney pieces, &c. The ground is black. The larger veins are a gold colour made from ochre and red, and may be varied, in colour indefinitely ; they are put upon a dry ground with a pencil and oil colour. Very fine distinct white and yellow veins run from the main ones, splitting up the black ground into fragments. The black spaces are then shaded and lightened by the use of grey tints. A few particles of gold leaf or metal put into or upon the gold colour veins improve the effect. Another method is to work in Sienna upon a white ground, and badger and blend various golden red and yellow hues together, to allow this to dry and then to paint in the intervening spaces with black and grey. The peculiarity of this marble is the intricate ramifications of the veining.
Grey marble, dove, or slate are all worked from a white ground. A feather is used to put in the veins; by this method the color is thoroughly and irregularly spread over the whole ground. All the veins must run in one general direction, and specks and dots must be added in brighter tints, with shells and fossils in lighter greys and white.
Red Derbyshire, porphry, and Irish red are all marbled off a bright red ground. Venetian red and vermilion with a little chrome are used in varying degrees of depth. The marbling is done by first glazing over the ground a coat of crimson lake, and then breaking it up by the use of a feather and turpentine with a little black. White or grey dots and veins are added in very thin white.
Green Marbles. Egyptian green and verd antique are green marbles which are worked upon a black ground. Chrome and Prussian blue, and white make the marbling colours, varying degrees of colour being used. Fossil spots and rings are added in white, cream, &c., while the innermost ground shows spaces of black. Lapis Lazuli. Lapis lazuli is used for special little medallions, &c. It is obtained from a pale blue ground ; ultramarine and gold leaf are used for the marbling and veining respectively. The veins are very fine and broken.
Graniting. Red and grey granite may be imitated by spotting a ground of either colour with white, red, grey, and black The dotting may be done with a graniting brush. Devonshire Marble. Devonshire marble is a conglomerate mass of ochres, reds, and browns, with white markings. It is represented upon a terra cotta ground by the use of feathers, sponge, and rags ; the veins being put in with a veining fitch (Fig. 72) or pencil. Alabaster. Alabaster is a favourite marble for church decoration. It may be wrought upon a creamy white ground in light red, and white and lake. It is a soft stone with undulating veins, and is readily imitated.
St. Anne's and other black and white marbles are worked upon black grounds with white markings. Grey is also used for the middle tints. In the imitation of all marbles great attention must be paid to the shape of the masses, and the direction of the veins. The character and distinctiveness of all marbles rest principally on the form that these take, and not on their scale or size. Colour is also important, although every class of marble will present samples widely different in colour, as well as in scale. Many of the most mysterious and beautiful effects seen in marbles may be imitated by the use of turpentine, which, when sprinkled on the wet color, opens it out in fantastically shaped forms of great beauty, and renders that translucent appearance common to the richer marbles. Amber and other very translucent substances may be imitated successfully by the methods common to marbling. Repeated varnishing and re-glazing is the means adopted to produce great depth and translucency. Many exquisite suggestions in, and revelations of color may be obtained by the examination of fragments of rough marble and mineralogical specimens under the microscope. The component colouring matters in marbles are seldom seen by the ordinary observer, who only receives a general impression of the apparent colour. This superficial color may be much more truly reproduced after studying the composition of the marbles under the microscope, when the particles of coloured matter, which go to produce the effect seen, may be utilized in obtaining the required superficial effect.
There are, of course, the broad, general divisions of types, or styles, with which we are gen- erally familiar — the domestic architecture of the New England States, of the Middle Atlantic States, and of the South.
These broad divisions, however, would by no means serve to identify all Early American dwellings, because there were sub-styles, and distinctly local styles, many of which were radically at variance with the "typical example." In the South, for instance, all the great houses did not have classic colonnaded porticoes.
Besides the Creole type of the far South (a type absolutely peculiar to the locality), there were a great many differing varieties of the style of the Classic Revival, and there were also the detached houses found in Richmond, Charleston, Norfolk, Annapolis, Alexandria, Baltimore and elsewhere in Delaware, Maryland, Virginia and the Carolinas. All could be classed as "Southern," but there are wide differences in their characteristics.
In the Middle Atlantic States there are the varieties developed by the early pioneer settlers of Pennsylvania as well as by its later more prosperous families. Different, again, is the farmhouse of the Dutch colonists, who built in the northern part of New Jersey, on Staten Island and Long Island, through New York State well up into the Mohawk Valley, and, on the west bank of the Hudson, throughout the Ramapo Hills and the Catskills.
In New England is found further variety, with widely different types, seen in isolated farmhouses and in the substantial homes of the merchants and ship-owners of Salem, Newport and New Bedford.
It is the purpose of this monograph, however, to show how a particular type of house, its identity traceable through detail, appears scattered in an irregular line southward from the Berkshires to the vicinity of Danbury, in Connecticut. And a remarkable proof of the close localism of Early American types of domestic architecture is seen in the fact that the examples illustrated, although found but a few miles from Litchfield, possess characteristics pronouncedly different.
A departure of a few miles from Connecticut is made in the inclusion of the unusually interesting houses in and near Old Chatham, which is over the New York State line due west from Pittsfield and Lenox, and due northwest from Stockbridge and Great Barrington, Massachusetts.
It is permissible, however, to include these old Chatham houses with the Connecticut examples found at Sharon, Kent, Danbury and adja- cent townships, because their architectural affinity is at once apparent. The houses show far more imagination and sophistication in matters of detail than those of Litchfield, the use of Palladian windows being the most conspicuous common feature.
Nothing in Litchfield, however, resembles the fine old house at Chatham Center shown in the illustrations on pages two, four, five and six. Fan-lights and side-lights were frequently used, and the Palladian window above the entrance appears to have been the sine qua non of the really pretentious house of this type.
It was also a favorite device to plaster the under side of the hood in the forms of cylindrical or elliptical barrel vaults, instead of the plas- tered quarter-spherical treatment of typical Pennsylvania origin, the "Germantown hood." It would seem, further, that it was the fashion to paint the plaster in these early Connecticut porch-vaults (including the Chatham, New York, examples) a rich shade of blue.
Wood was wet when it was painted. If only the surface of the wood is wet, then only 1 sunny day is usually needed for drying prior to painting.
If the wood is saturated, several sunny or windy days are necessary for drying prior to painting.
Unfinished siding was exposed to several weeks of sunlight before painting. Sunlight degrades the unfinished wood surface, thus it will never hold paint as well as fresh wood. If the unfinished wood was exposed more than 3 to 4 weeks, lightly sand or power wash the surface to remove the thin layer of degraded wood before applying paint.
Temperature was too cold when the wood was painted. Oil-based paints should be applied when the temperature is at least 40F; for latex paints, the temperature should be at least 50F. Conditions should remain above these temperatures for 24 hours after painting. When pre-treating the wood with a paintable water-repellent preservative (a recommended practice), best results are achieved if it is applied when temperatures are greater than 70F.
Humidity in the house was too high during the heating season.
A high level of humidity inside the house is probably the cause if paint failure occurs on the outside walls of the bathroom or kitchen, and it can be even more pronounced on the outside of an upper floor.
In multistory buildings, there is a chimney effect. Warm moist air is trying to vent upstairs, and eventually this moisture travels out through the siding. Paint failure may be more noticeable near electrical outlets or other breaks in the vapor barrier. Drier air enters the house through cracks on the main level; therefore, paint failure caused by high humidity is usually not a problem on the main level.
Condensation on the windows also indicates excessive humidity in the house. Turning down your humidifier or turning on a bathroom exhaust fan will help lower the humidity level inside the house. An energy efficient but somewhat expensive solution to high levels of humidity is to install an air-to-air heat exchanger. Here, warm moist air gives its heat to the incoming fresh, dry air.
Wood was installed directly over foam or foil-faced insulation board. Water can travel in behind the siding of the house through various routes but has to travel out through the wood, pushing the paint off. Even if the paint remains
Why House Paint Fails
Wood was too hot when it was painted or was heated soon after painting. Do not paint when the temperature is greater than 90F. To prevent temperature blisters, avoid painting surfaces that will soon be heated. The best procedure is to “follow the sun around the house.” The east side of the building should be painted late in the morning, the south side in the middle of the afternoon, the west side late in the afternoon. The north side can be painted at any time during the day. However, at least 2 hours are needed for the fresh paint to dry before weather conditions cool to the point where dew forms. If blistering on the wood surface does occur, allow the paint to dry for a few days, scrape off the blisters, smooth the edges with sandpaper, and paint the area.
Weather was too humid when the surface was painted. When water-based paints cure, the water should evaporate as fast or faster than the solvents. After the water has evaporated, the paint will shrink to nearly its final shape. As the solvents evaporate, the paint chemically reacts to form a hard material. When it is too humid, water cannot evaporate and the solvents may evaporate first, causing the paint to cure while still in a water-filled state. You cannot recover from this type of disaster. Oil-based paints will also fail if conditions are too humid.
On the surface, this moisture can cause other problems. Large overhangs, proper caulking, and a 12-inch-minimum ground clearance may decrease the chance of water getting in behind the siding. Additional suggestions to prevent paint failure in this situation include the following:
Driving small wedges (1/16 inch) under every sixth row of siding may permit water to escape
and reduce the moisture problem. However, wind-driven rain may also use this as an access and aggravate the situation. Back priming (painting the back of the siding before installation) may help reduce or prevent paint failure.
Install roofing paper (15- to 30-lb felt) beneath the siding. Note: The best solution is to attach furring strips to the studs through the insulation board, making air spaces behind the siding. Furring strips also make a nice home for bugs, if you do not screen the bottom. A new spacer-type webbing called “cedar breather” is sometimes used under wood shingles and may have merit for use under siding.
House has no interior vapor barrier. The absence of an interior vapor barrier is related to the problems of high levels of humidity inside the house during the heating season and wood that was installed directly over foam or foil-faced insulation board. Driving wedges (previously noted) under the siding may be the easiest solution. Applying certain interior vaporetarding paints and installing electrical outlet gaskets may also be effective, especially on the upper floor of a multistory house.
Wood siding is dirty. If the siding is dirty, the surface of the siding should be power washed or cleaned with detergent and a stiff bristle or brass brush and rinsed well. Never use steel or iron, which causes iron stain and may glaze the surface.
Wood has mill glaze. Mill glaze can be caused by several factors. For example, if during planing to make smooth wood, the planer blades were dull, running too fast, or pressing too hard on the wood surface, the surface of the wood can become hardened or resins may be drawn to the surface causing a glaze. Whatever the cause, the surface appears to be case hardened. If a drop of water beads up on the wood surface but does not on a lightly sanded surface, you may
have what is commonly called mill glaze. If you have mill glaze, the smooth surface must be lightly sanded or power washed to remove the hardened surface.
Oddly enough, controlled wetting of new siding with a garden hose may promote better adhesion to the redried wood. The water releases the stresses in the wood. You can also create a type of mill glaze by sand blasting or using a wire wheel on the wood surface. Mill glaze is not a problem on rough-sawn siding.
Brown stains appear on the surface of the paint. Paint does not have to fall off to fail. Moisture traveling through wood pulls water-based extractives through the paint, leaving brown stains on the surface of the paint. If the wood is kept dry, the water-based extractives in the wood will not bleed through paint.
Keeping all moisture out may be difficult. Oil-based primers usually block extractive stains better than latex primers and may be a better choice on redwood and cedar; however, oil paints can increase mildew.
Compared with oil-based primers, latex primers produce a more flexible paint film with better durability and can be used when extractive staining is not a problem.
Improved stain-blocking latex primers will probably be available in the future.
The interior of the average home is composed of many different materials, all kinds of textures, grains and colors, all worked over and installed in place by different kinds of mechanics and tradesmen, any one of whom might be an artist at his own trade but knows nothing about the others.
The homeowner who undertakes his own interior repairs and maintenance jobs must learn and acquire a smattering of all trades. He will either make one or two attempts at small odd jobs and give up in disgust, or he will stick to it; master a few of the rules and techniques of the various trades, and get a great kick out of it. Incidentally, the ideas that he is saving a considerable amount of money will not be painful.
The old saying that "an expert is a man possessed of a vast amount of ignorance on a great many subjects" is true. The homeowner does not want to be an expert with a finished hand for one task alone. He wants to have a small amount of knowledge about a great many things.
Most house interiors have wood floors, trim, windows and doors. They have plaster walls and ceilings. Most of the walls are painted or covered with wallpaper, and a few of the floors are covered with linoleum or tile. It is not too much to expect, to be able to learn how to treat these materials once they have been put up or nailed down by an expert.
It is being done every day by men and women who had the will to apply themselves, and in many cases it has developed into an interesting hobby. It has been proved beyond question, that any intelligent adult can handle his own interior repair work with ease, once he has been shown the right way in which to tackle it. There are two reasons for keeping the interior of a house in good repair.
The first is to make it pleasant to the eye, and the second is to make it comfortable. If you accomplish both of these things, you are doing a lot, and at the same time you will probably go a long way toward making the house safe to live in as well. The first thing you notice when you enter a house is the condition of the walls and ceilings.
If there is a gaping seam in the wallpaper, or one corner of it peel ing off, it strikes your eye at once. You also think to yourself, that it seems a small thing to let go that way. If there is a large stain on the wall, you wonder why the owner has not done something about it.
If there is a badly cracked ceiling, or a discolored ceiling, you promptly feel that the house is owned by careless or disinterested people, who are obviously content to live in any kind of surroundings. Other people notice exactly the same defects in your house when they enter it. You do not notice these small things about your own home for the simple reason that Stained walls and spotted ceilings can ruin the appearance of a well furnished room. The walls are the most important items of any enclosed area because they attract the most attention.
The second for cleanliness. The third for beautification. These three principal reasons are placed in the above order, because the quality of cleanliness is of greater importance to the community than that of beauty ; and further, be- cause the first necessity provides the reason for the very existence of the craft. In addition to these reasons, the fact is also apparent, that it is not possible to have complete and true beauty if the first two qualities are absent.
First, the outside of the house will be exposed to wet, heat, and frost. To meet these demands the work must be finished in hard, glossy colour with a good body ; each coat must be thoroughly dry before the next is applied. The colours chosen must be of a permanent character, those having the greatest weather-resisting properties being preferable. We must re- member that the destructive action of the elements will commence upon the surface. In the colouring, allowance must be made for the action of the weather, and also for the surrounding brick, tile, slate, or stone.
Upon entering the house, the remarks that apply to the entrance door will hold good in regard to the hall. Effort should be made here to convey an impression of comfort, warmth, and homeliness. It should, moreover, be a reflex of the tastes and character of its owner. Any undue parade of gilding or expensive ' material will impart an unpleasant air of chilling grandeur and ostentation, which better befits a public building than a home. The display of wealth should be reserved for more pi'ivate apart- ments. The colouring of the hall should be low in tone and richly quiet in effect, suggesting comfort and even opulence, but forming a simple contrast to the entertaining and other rooms opening out of it. The finish of the work should be hard and durable, with, few ledges upon which dust can accumulate, as it will be less shut in than the rooms.
Today, more money is expended in the painting of a single edifice than would have sufficed to paint every house in a respectable-sized town thirty years ago ; and the amount of capital, skill and intelligence now required to conduct the business successfully in the cities and large towns, was not dreamed of at that time.
The services of the painter are better acknowledged and appreciated, and his labor more adequately rewarded, than formerly. The business tact, knowledge, skill and capital of employers, in many cases, meet with ample but deserved remuneration, for the business seems to be attended with more than its fair share of the vexations and annoyances which, to a greater or less degree, appertain to all the various branches of the mechanic arts.
One of the most serious difficulties with which the employing painter contends is that of obtaining the services of skilful, reliable workmen, during what is called the busy seasons. This grows out of the fact, partly, that a large proportion of repainting, interiors par- ticularly, is crowded into the brief season of spring, and partly from the idea that once generally prevailed, and which unfortunately obtains now to some extent, that anybody can do plain painting, and that the art of mixing and laying on of colors requires less skill, and is more easily acquired, than skill and dex- terity in other trades.
During this brief busy season, the employer, under the pressure of necessity, avails himself of such workmen as present themselves ; some of them, perhaps, fresh from the lapstone and the last, who have stepped from the shoemaker's bench to the paint-brush, as if the same were a natural and proper transition.
The elements, too, conspire against the painter : a sudden shower will sometimes produce a most undesirable commingling of tints, blending black, white and gray in streaky confusion. The dust-plague, too, is ofttimes a double plague to him. A change of temperature may check the drying disposition of his pigments, for the property of absorbing oxygen, which the oil possesses at ordinary temperatures, seems to be wanting under cer- tain atmospheric conditions.
A few are hand-painted, principally marbles, high-class friezes, French scenic and landscape goods. Others are stencilled, or partially stencilled, and partially printed and hand-coloured a rapidly improving and increasing class. The difference between machine - printed and hand-printed goods is seen by a careful examination of the margin, which in hand- or block-printed goods shows the register of the repeat of each block.
The finish of the pattern may also be observed at the ends of the piece, a portion of plain ground being left clear of pattern at either end ; whereas in a machine-printed pattern there is an unbroken continuity. An expert will also detect the difference in colour surface left by the block and the roller.
The practical advantage gained by the hand printing is mainly that the matching of the paper is truer, and the colouring more even, an inseparable drawback to machine printing being the slight unevenness of tension which occurs as the roll of the paper passes round the printing machine rollers, and the tendency to slight oscillation of the paper from side to side. In block printing each colour or tint is printed separately.
In machine printing any number of colours can be printed at one operation, the paper coming under the whole of the variously tinted rollers one after the other before leaving the machine. Qualities. The different qualities of wall papers are many, and are mostly distinguished in the trade by the class of grounds on which they are printed.
The number of printings, except in hand-printed goods, has less influence in the assessment of cost than would be supposed. Varieties. The cheapest class of wall papers are pulps, in which the natural colour of the paper itself, either as ground or ornament, forms part of the finished surface. Then we come to grounds, in which the whole paper is coloured with a ground preparatory to printing the design upon it.
The operation of grounding the paper is done by machinery. Satins are papers in which the grounds are polished or glazed before printing, by rotary brushes actuated by machinery and the use of French chalk. Micas, golden frosted, and crystal damask are papers in which, while yet wet, the grounds are powdered with talc or mica to produce a satiny sheen. The papers are rich and effective. Embossed or stamped papers are those in which the ground or pattern, or both, are stamped in relief.
Papers which are merely given an all over texture in stamping are termed grained papers. Ingrain papers are pulps of a stout high quality, in which additional colour and apparent texture are introduced by the use of coloured fit are added to the pulp during the paper- making process. Sanitaries are papers in which the printing is done in oil colours upon a heavily sized or otherwise prepared ground.
These papers, owing to the oxidisation of the oil, become brittle and carbonised if kept in stock long, and have an objectionable gloss. Sanitums and washables, either the ground or pattern, or both, are printed in a washable distemper and spirit colour insoluble in water. They are an improvement on Sanitaries as they do not have the glossy surface. Pegamoid papers are a recent introduction, in which, after printing in ordinary colours, the paper is treated with an elastic water varnish prepared from "pegamoid."
Metal papers, as their name implies, are papers in which pattern or ground is printed in an imitation gold, metal, or in bronze powder, and are not to be confounded with papers in which the metal is lacquered and varnished. Golds; in these the real article, gold-leaf, is substituted for the imitation.
The methods are necessarily changed by change of circumstances. Whenever possible a ladder fall or long rope should be used, both for the sake of safety and economy. It is let down from a window or roof, and one end is fastened round the top stave of the ladder. The end of the ladder is placed against the wall, a curb, or is "footed" by a couple of men, and the man at the top hauls in the rope. As soon as the ladder is up, the two men at the foot can guide it into position.
A ladder of any length can be easily raised by three men in this way, and an ordinarily long ladder by two. In raising such a ladder without the fall or rope at least four men will be necessary. The two shortest and heaviest men should always foot the ladder, or, if it can be set against a curb, one will suffice at foot. When partly up, the amount of leverage exerted by the long end of the ladder is considerable. The use of a shorter ladder as a crutch to take the weight while the men shift positions or rest is often resorted to in the case of very long or heavy ladders. The fact that by this means a man can reach so much higher than the other men, gives him increased power over the weight and makes his assistance trebly useful.