House Painters in Croydon, PA

Most of Croydon is wood-framed with wood or composite siding, which is good news and bad news.

Good news: wood takes paint better than almost anything else, and it can be repaired rather than replaced when it fails. Bad news: wood moves with moisture, and every joint, butt end, and exposed end grain is a place water gets in.

The parts that go first are consistent. The bottom course closest to grade. Window sills, which are pitched to shed water and therefore hold it. Corner boards where two pieces meet. Fascia behind a gutter that has been overflowing. Those are the spots we check first and the spots that decide whether this is a paint job or a paint and carpentry job.

The bungalows here have deep front porches with low rooflines, and low rooflines mean the porch stays shaded and damp.

Porch ceilings, columns, and railings are the highest maintenance surfaces on these houses. Ceiling boards take moisture from above whenever a gutter or roof edge fails, and the failure shows as peeling long before anyone finds the leak. We repair the wood and find the source, because repainting a porch ceiling without solving the water is a one-season fix.

Croydon's proximity to the Delaware means higher ambient moisture than a few miles inland, and that shows up as mildew on the shaded elevations of nearly every house here.

Mildew has to be killed and washed off before priming. Painting over it just paints it, and it comes back through the new coat within a year. The shaded side of the house should also get a mildew-resistant finish rather than the same product used on the sunny side.

A lot of the work here is modest in scope. One elevation, a porch, a trim package, an interior room or two.

We take those jobs, and we do the prep the same way we would on a larger one. A small job with skipped prep is not a bargain, it is a shorter warranty. See interior painting and exterior painting for how each runs.

A good share of the work here is turnover: getting a house ready to list, or getting a rental ready for the next tenant.

For a sale, the front elevation, the porch, and the front door carry the most weight per dollar, and clean neutral interior walls photograph and show better than a bold color a buyer has to look past. What actually costs you money on a walkthrough is peeling exterior paint, water stains on ceilings, and soft trim, because a buyer reads all three as maintenance that was skipped.

For a rental, the priority is durability rather than looks. Washable finishes in hallways and kitchens, proper primer over patched areas so the repairs do not flash, and semi-gloss on trim and doors so the next round of scuffs wipes off instead of soaking in.

Either way, tell Ed which one it is at the walkthrough. A house being sold and a house being rented should not get the same specification.