Getting a Long Beach House Ready for a Repaint Week
The paint is the smaller part of a repaint week. Most of what makes a job run smoothly happens in the days before the first brush touches the wall: moving things, covering things, sorting out where the water comes from and who parks where. A Long Beach house has its own wrinkles, from narrow driveways in Belmont Shore to alley garages near Bixby Knolls to hedges that grow right up to the stucco. The questions below are the ones that come up most often before a repaint begins.
How far ahead should things be moved away from the house?
Anything within about four feet of a wall needs to move or be covered. That means patio furniture, planters, grills, bicycles, trash cans and decorative items hung on the wall. Crews need room for a ladder or a scaffold, and a person with a brush in one hand cannot work around a barbecue.
The night before is fine for light items. Heavy pots and furniture are easier to shift a few days earlier, so there is no last minute scramble. Anything left in place gets a plastic cover, but a cover is a second choice, because overspray and drips find the gaps.
What happens to the plants?
Shrubs and flower beds against a wall are the most common casualty of a repaint, usually from foot traffic rather than paint. A crew scraping a fascia board or pressure washing a wall drops flakes, grit and wash water onto whatever is below.
Bushes that touch the wall are tied back gently with soft twine, or trimmed by the owner or a gardener beforehand so the stucco and trim can be washed and painted all the way to the ground. Drop cloths go over the beds, and plastic is avoided in full afternoon sun because it traps heat and cooks the leaves underneath. Breathable canvas cloths are safer. Old paint on a house built before 1978 may contain lead, so any bed next to a scraped wall gets covered with sheeting and cleaned up properly at the end of the day.
Where do the cars go?
Overspray does not drift far from a brush or roller, but a sprayer is another matter. On a windy afternoon, a fine mist can travel well past the edge of a driveway. Cars should be parked off the property or around the corner on the days of exterior spraying. In Belmont Shore and Naples, where street parking is tight, this is worth arranging in advance, and a quick note to the neighbors saves trouble.
The same goes for the garage. If the garage door is being painted, the car stays out until the paint is dry to the touch, and the door stays open or cracked so the paint does not stick to the weatherstripping.
Do windows and doors need to be taped?
Crews often mask glass with tape and thin plastic before spraying, and cut in carefully by hand where the sash meets the wall. Windows that are painted shut from old coats stay shut. Opening them breaks the paint seal and can tear the film along the edge, so a window that sticks gets scored with a utility knife before anyone tries to move it.
Doors that will be painted are best removed from the hinges or at least left open until dry. A front door painted in place and closed too soon will stick to the frame, and the peeling that results is a pain to fix.
What about pets and children?
Ladders, open cans, wet paint and scraped debris are not a good mix with dogs or small kids. A closed room or a day at a friend's house is easier than supervising near a work area. Dogs that bark at strangers on ladders will be distracting for the crew, and an open gate is an easy way to lose a pet during a busy workday.
Interior work adds fumes and dust. Low odor acrylic latex paints are used for most interiors now, and ventilation with fans and open windows clears the air within a day. People with asthma or other breathing issues may want to stay elsewhere for the first night.
Where does the water come from?
Pressure washing needs an outdoor spigot with decent flow. Most Long Beach houses have one at the front or back, but older ones may have a corroded valve that leaks when turned. It is worth checking the spigot a week before, and having it fixed if the stem drips.
Wash water runs down the driveway and into the street, and from there into the storm drains that empty into the Los Angeles River and eventually the harbor. Crews should keep paint, cleaning solutions and large debris out of the drain. Rinse water from latex brushes goes into a bucket, and settled solids are scooped out and bagged.
How does the weather change the schedule?
Gray mornings delay exterior painting, and the marine layer often keeps walls too damp to coat until mid morning. A repaint planned for two days may take three along the coast, especially in May and June. Rain stops everything, since paint needs hours of dry weather after it goes on. The few rainy days in winter around Los Angeles County usually come as a block, and a job started just before one is often paused until the surfaces dry out.
A flexible start date and a crew that explains the weather plan in advance save a lot of frustration.
What is the order of work on a typical house?
- Move furniture, tie back plants and park the cars away from the house
- Wash the walls, trim and any concrete steps and let everything dry
- Scrape, sand and patch, then caulk the joints
- Prime bare wood, patches and any chalky areas
- Apply the first coat to the walls, then the second coat after the recoat time
- Paint the trim, doors and details with the enamel selected
- Pull the tape and masking while the last coat is still slightly soft so the edge stays clean
- Walk the house with the crew lead, mark any missed spots and touch up
On a stucco house, wall coats usually take the most time, because the texture soaks up paint. On a wood sided bungalow in California Heights, prep and trim take longer, since every board edge needs attention.
What about the final walkthrough?
The walkthrough is best done in daylight, after the paint has dried but before the ladders go away. Looking at each wall from the street, then up close, shows roller marks, missed spots, drips on sills and paint on hardware. A small notebook or phone photos of anything that needs fixing keeps the list clear.
Keep the leftover cans, the color codes and the sheen information somewhere dry. A set of touch-up notes with the date of the job helps whoever paints the house next.
A repaint runs best when the yard, driveway and schedule are sorted out before the crew arrives. A few hours of preparation by the owner saves a day of delay on the job.