TigerOx Painting has maintained a Building Contractor's License in Minnesota for a number of years, which requires continuing education on topics like new building codes, legal issues for sub-contractors, and lead information. However, the lead information was never very good, and there was no federal standard. This left us in the uncomfortable position of really not knowing what to say when our customers asked us about lead. And questions about lead come up all the time, as they should. Exposure to lead during renovations is the leading cause of lead poisoning in children, and it's not so good for adults either. 

But new laws have recently been enacted concerning lead safety in renovations! The EPA now requires that the pamphlet, Renovate Right: Important Lead Hazard Information for Families, Child Care Providers and Schools, be given to homeowners in any renovation that affects more than a 2 x 2 foot square area of paint on a structure built before 1978. (Click title for link.) The previous government pamphlet more or less said "don't do any painting ever," which is not helpful. The new pamphlet is so much better, because it explains how to go about painting safely. There are now certified classes in lead abatement, and a certification process for contractors. TigerOx Painting could not be more excited about this; our days of mumbling and gesturing inarticulately are over. (Well, okay, those days are never over, but they are when it comes to lead.) Jeremy and Anders have both taken the new lead certification course, and our Lead-Safe Certification is now pending. We hope to write a couple more blog posts about the new safety standards. Stay tuned!

More information about lead can be found at www.epa.gov/lead.

It takes us maybe longer than it should to cotton to these newfangled infernal machines, but TigerOx Painting has finally put up a business page on facebook.

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Almost 4 years ago now, Sherwin Williams published an article about TigerOx Painting for their trade magazine, Painting Contractor. It's maybe not hard-hitting Pulitzer-level journalism, but is a sweet little article, and the pictures are very nice. The cool thing about looking at this four years later is to see how little our staff has turned over. Stephanie and Nik both went on to other things, but Celeste and Tom are still with us. The four partners remain the same are better than ever.

Article here.

This is one of those complicated questions, because the answer is both yes and no. Many people believe that stucco should never be painted, because, 50 years ago when oil paint was the only option, this was true. Never use oil paint on stucco. Stucco, like masonry in general, needs to breathe, to accept and release moisture as the weather conditions change. Oil paint will act as a vapor barrier, and there's a good chance the stucco underneath will crumble, leading to some serious peeling and flaking.

 However, there are several modern, latex paints that have been formulated with stucco in mind, and they work beautifully. Painting stucco can cover the patches that have been made, erase the seams between an addition and the original structure, and brighten the sometimes depressing greyness of untinted stucco. This brings me to another thing: although not always true, sometimes the original stucco can be historically important (I'm thinking here of the interesting sand textures and tinting on a Percell & Emsley house here in Minneapolis) and painting over this is a crime. An architectural crime! Don't be a perpetrator.

Painting stucco is, in some ways, easier than painting wooden siding. The first step is to get the stucco clean.  This is best done with a pressure washer.  The next step is to remove any loose paint, if the stucco has been previously painted.  The pressure washing should remove most of the loose paint, but it may be necessary to scrape or wire brush some spots.  Now is the time to fix any spots where the stucco has fallen out.   Once any patching has been done and is dry, it’s time to prime.  Stucco and wood are different surfaces, so a traditional wood primer may not be appropriate for priming stucco.  Check the can’s label or ask your paint store sales rep to make sure.  Sherwin-Williams sells a product called Loxon XP which acts as both a quality stucco primer and top-coat.  After priming, caulk any cracks and apply the finish coat.  If the stucco has been properly primed, any high quality latex finish paint can be used for the final coat.

Your bedroom is where you spend most of your time, even if most of that time is asleep. It is your santuary and where you perform the important work of recharging your batteries. Color selection isn't much different for chosing a color for a bedroom versus any other room in the house, but in this entry we will outline a couple of guidelines. There are no hard and fast rules to picking a bedroom color. Just look for a color that makes you happy, and be open to experimenting. Color influences us more than we realize, and your bedroom is the most occupied space in your house. Personalize and really make it yours.

1. Consider using warm colors.

Popular wisdom says stay with a warm color, like yellows, reds, oranges, tans, purples, etc. I like this idea because I think it’s ok to feel enveloped in your bedroom, like it’s a warm and cozy place. I also like picking a color from a favorite rug or bedspread, even if it’s the smallest thread. Let’s say you are not fond of the warm color palate, that’s fine, just pick something cheerful. You do not want a blue gray that will bum you out everyday. Go for a white based blue that has some spunk. And let’s just say you have lots of red accents in your room and you want gray walls, that can look pretty sharp.

2. Samples are key.

I think if you go with a yellow or red, you should do samples and keep in mind that you will be dealing with multiple coats. I just painted a bedroom a lovely pale yellow and it took five coats with a primer to achieve the color. Another consideration for coverage is flat paint covers better than eggshell, satin and semi-gloss. You can discover how well the color covers with a sample board. Most paint stores have cheaper versions of sample quarts, and they are worth the money. It is not always easy to see how a color will look from a tiny sample. And some colors writ large will just vibrate, which might be too much for you to fall asleep in.

3. Don't worry about what other people think.

Dining rooms and living rooms are designed to be public spaces; bedrooms are not. Once past the teenage years of sulking in the bedroom, very few people allow anyone but the most intimate friends into their bedrooms. Don't worry aboutwhat other people will think of the coral you love, or the Danish blue, or the aubergine.  It is your space, the theatre of your dreams. You choose the set colors.

Doors:

I've been trying to come up with a pithy aphorism about eyes being the windows of the soul, but the front door is the soul of the home, but as you see from my example, it's not really working out. But there is an proverb in there somewhere, because the front door is so absolutely vital to the look of your home, it's character and sense of invitation. While not always true, often builders orient the front door so that it is the focal point. (Occasionally builders get excited about columns or shutters, and bury the door, which has always struck me as a little odd.) The front door is the portal to the home, the threshold to the private sphere. Not to get too overblown about this, but the ancient Celts used to set impediments in the doorway, such as a beam or a stone, as a subtle reminder to be mindful of the movement between the worlds. Tibetans pound bits of metal into thresholds, for similar purposes, to affix the way in and out.

My remarks are intended to apply to doors that are to be painted. If you have a natural door, it's usually best to leave it natural, if it is in any kind of salvageable condition. If you are unsure about what color the front door should be, then go outside, cross the street, and take a good hard look. This color should probably not be any of the other accent colors; a front door should be unique. I tend to argue against light-colored doors, but my grandmother and I always disagreed about this. She would say that a white door looked clean; I believe a white door is almost instantly smudged and scuffed, and therefore looks and is dirty. I, personally, find reds and purples to be really wonderful door colors, because they have such a warmth and life to them. Now, I don't just mean Viking purple and Fire Engine red, I mean the whole gamut from soft, warm, almost brown reads, to purples that are just this side of black. The color need not be an aggressive color, but an undercurrent of the emotions suggested by red and purple can really create vivid entrance.

Windows:

First, a note on windows. There tend to be at least two different kinds of window on a Minneapolis or a St Paul house: storm windows and sash windows. Storm windows tend to be affixed on the outside, are a single pane of glass, and are there for the noble purpose of reducing your heating and cooling costs. The air between the storm and the inner windows acts as an insulator. Storm windows, in turn, tend to break into two different kinds: the traditional kind, which much be changed with the seasons, as there is both a storm window and a storm screen, and the combination storm, a modern invention that has sliding panes of glass and screens and do not need to be changed with the season. Combination storms can come in all variety of materials: wood, vinyl and aluminum.

Underneath these windows tend to lurk the double hung sash window, with a lower pane that slides up and an upper pane that (theoretically) slides down. There are also casements, crank-outs, pull-ins, and a variety of other, newer windows that tend to be fitted with thermal glasses and have no storms. Even houses that have had all the old storms removed and replaced with combination storms tend to have at least a couple of the traditional storms on oddly shaped or otherwise stationary windows, usually the ones that never open: the big front window, stained glass, piano windows, or the pair that sometimes flank the chimney. I wanted to make a note on definitions, as we, as professionals, often get into semi-comical conversations about their windows, as the specific terminology isn't always known to the homeowner.

Windows are tricky, because they are almost always a mix of styles and materials: the lower windows redone in the 20s, the upper windows in the 70s; some have wooden storms, some vinyl, some aluminum. Windows that used to have storms and screens that hung into place but have been fitted with modern combination storms, often still have the hanging hardware in place. For crying out loud, have these removed! This has nothing to do with color selection, but it makes me so crazy I feel obliged to repeat it at every opportunity.

Windows read as black from the outside, which may strike you as strange, but it's true. Because of this, we often recommend that sash windows be painted with a color other than white, so that the pane divisions don't appear distracting. The same holds true for storm windows, especially if they are fit inside a light or white trim. Traditionally, storms were painted black or dark green (especially a color called “Black Forest Green” that can be found in the Benjamin Moore color charts.) You generally can't go wrong with this. Exterior color choice is by nature conservative, and the traditions are tried and true. We have also had good results with other dark, rich colors, such as reddish-browns, bronzes, and almost purple charcoals. I also once painted the storms in a porch an aluminum silver, and it was brilliantly cool. The storms on the body of the house were dark green though.

This brings me to another thing: because of the mixture of different kinds of materials on a home, some times people feel trapped into matching all the storms to the white vinyl storms, or whatever material will not be painted. While it's certainly a valid choice to make all the storms the same color, by all means, feel like you have permission to paint all the wooden storms one way, and leave the vinyl white. I have white vinyl storms on most of my house, but I recently replaced the storm over the picture window, because it had been installed broken. I went with a wooden storm, and I intend to paint it a dark green. Most of the time, the visual context for the window is for people standing on the front porch. It really doesn't matter that it won't match the windows on the second story, because they aren't seen together much anyway. Moreover, white would look incongruous with other Victorian colors on the porch. Porch windows are in a different context than third story storms, and it's okay to tailor your color choices to specific parts and usages of the house.