Painters in Kanata

Five decades of Kanata construction in one service area

Beaverbrook dates from the late 1960s and was laid out as a planned community, so its houses share an era of construction detailing and the maintenance issues that come with it. Katimavik and Bridlewood followed through the 1970s and 1980s. Kanata Lakes and Morgan's Grant are substantially newer. That spread means a Kanata quote cannot be estimated from square footage alone, and it is why we walk the house rather than pricing off a floor plan.

Mature tree cover and what it does to an exterior

The older Kanata neighbourhoods have canopy that the newer subdivisions do not, and shade changes the exterior job. North and east elevations under mature trees hold moisture longer after rain, grow mildew on the coating rather than merely collecting dirt, and take sap and debris fall. Those elevations get treated for mildew rather than just washed, because rinsing spores off the surface leaves the ones in the substrate to grow back through the new film.

Whole-home repaints in an occupied Kanata house

Most Kanata repaints we do are whole-home rather than single-room, and most are done with the family still living there. We sequence by floor and by wing so there is always a finished part of the house to retreat to, keep the stairwell for last because it connects everything, and put every room back at the end of the day. Nothing is left staged over a weekend.

Vinyl, aluminum and fibre-cement siding in Kanata

Kanata has a lot of vinyl and aluminum siding, and both are paintable but neither is forgiving. Vinyl must be coated in a colour no darker than the original, because a dark coating absorbs enough heat to warp the panel. Aluminum chalks heavily on south and west elevations and has to be washed back to a squeak before anything bonds to it. Fibre-cement on the newer builds is the easiest of the three, provided the factory finish is sound.

Sequencing an interior around a home office

More Kanata houses than not have someone working in them during the day, and that fact changes the sequencing of an interior repaint more than any technical consideration on the job. We ask which room is the office and when the calls are, then plan around both. That usually means the office is painted first or last rather than in the middle, sanding and any compressor work is scheduled into known gaps, and the room being worked on is never the one sharing a wall with a meeting. It costs us nothing to plan and it is the difference between a tolerable week and a miserable one.

Colour choice in rooms with limited winter daylight

Ottawa's winter daylight is short and low, and a colour chosen in July can be unrecognizable in January. For rooms used mostly in the evening, we sample under the lighting you actually use rather than by the window, since a warm bulb over a cool grey produces a colour nobody picked. Samples go on the wall itself, not on a card held against it.

Access, scheduling and the Kanata service radius

We cover Kanata north and south, from Beaverbrook and Morgan's Grant through Katimavik, Bridlewood, Glen Cairn and Kanata Lakes, and out to the Terry Fox corridor. Exterior work is booked early in the season rather than late, because the elevations we most often need scaffolding for are the same two-storey rears that lose the sun first in September.

• Whole-home interior repaints, occupied or vacant
• Exterior siding, trim, soffit, fascia and front doors
• Vinyl, aluminum and fibre-cement siding recoating
• Mildew treatment on shaded north and east elevations
• Drywall repair, crack patching and skim coating
• Garage doors, porch columns and railings