hand-painted kitchens, furniture & period property decorating

Posted: 29 Aug 2013 09:49 AM PDT

The post A quick trip round decorating appeared first on Traditional Painter

I thought with the holiday time coming to an end now, I would cover a few mini topics.

The Blogging Painters

Over in the USA you will find a very professional painter group online. This week they have turned their attention to keeping workers fit and healthy, and this is a pertinent article for the immortals who think they are immune from physical problems.

As someone who did some serious damage many years ago falling off a ladder, and spent 2 years getting over it, I can assure all the fit young things out there, that all that matters is your health. Without it, many bets are off professionally and personally.

However, the uncomfortable truth about health on site is the unspectacular injuries, the low level damage that is going on all the time, on the quiet. Ask the elderly manual workers now creaking like an old hinge, remembering the days they could stretch forever, and do 12 hours sanding on their knees on concrete floors and not feel a thing. Where were the kneepads and stretches when you needed them most!

This article covers all the bad, and of course comes up with a positive – a very interesting contraption for saving backs and increasing productivity. Win-win.

Mad for quoting

The sunshine seems to be inspiring thoughts of decorating throughout the UK. Holmans were telling me that last year was such a wash out there is simply a lot of exterior painting work to be catching up on. Make hay…

I don’t know what our excuse is, though. Traditional Painter specialists have also received a relative deluge of enquiries for kitchen and furniture painting this month. This is normally our off-season for taking bookings, but contacting us now is a good plan, as we work on the basis of a 10-12 week lead time on kitchens, and before you know it, Christmas will be upon us.

This is a recent kitchen hand painted by Mark Nash.

It’s all in the preparation

Lee in Newcastle spotted this fine flaky paint at a Starbucks. No primer, nor even self-priming finish, just plain eggshell paint, straight over maple. Good enough till it dried, then the person who paid for it presumably woke up and smelled the coffee.

If you know the rules you can break them, (although there is no rule to break with priming, just do it.) Unfortunately many younger painters are being taught on site how to cut corners before they understand the proper way of working.

Heard today, for instance, how a young hopeful was told to press really hard with the roller to force the paint under the flaking paint. Better than removing the failing coat first, by all accounts!

What’s the worst corner-cutting you ever heard of?

This week we published our Newsletter on Bank Holiday Monday, instead of the normal Saturday morning slot. Everyone was at the beach, so that didn’t work It is online though, so check it out. It is pretty good and has a few juicy paragraphs, an easy prize draw, and more.

Yellow Pages…

Google claim that 97% of consumers in USA search for local businesses online. I also read here that Yellow Pages online is growing rapidly in the USA, and as a sector, contractors spend most, but receive the least responses from YP.

Not sure if that means contractors are spending too much on advertising, or Yellow Pages doesn’t work for contractors? I know that I hardly ever heard builders and decorators in UK eulogising about the old paper-backed Yellow Pages’ ability for bringing in work, despite vast sums being spent.

The above banner links to a worldwide opportunity to spend your money on Yellow Pages ads in any city you like.

Normal service will be resumed next week, and a newsletter will be coming out on Saturday as normal, before you hit the beach.

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A quick trip round decorating