Posted by Charles Budd on Monday, August 15, 2016,
Until the scaffolding was up on this semi-detached house in Stratford upon Avon, it was difficult to see the state of the faux Tudor timber beams at the top of the house. Once I got up onto the scaffolding, and poked my finger into the timber, I got rather a shock. It was not only rotten, but just thin planking.
Taking a closer look at the paint, you can see it was in very poor shape. Nearly all the paint would have to come off.
It was time to get my professional Finnish and German sanding equ...
Posted by Charles Budd on Monday, August 24, 2015,
I won't drone on for too long about how much I love my sanding equipment. I'm sure you've better things to do. I've got two Mirka sanders for broad areas - the Ceros and Deros, and I've got two Festool sanders - the RO90 for exterior timber work, and my RTS400, mainly for interior woodwork, and for finishing off exterior woodwork.
These sanders make a MASSIVE difference to my decorating. Sorry for the caps, but I can't emphasise how useful they are. Not only can I sand much quicker with these...
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Posted by Charles Budd on Tuesday, July 28, 2015,
I love decorating in Stratford upon Avon. It's an old town, with plenty of old buildings, and that's what I love the most. Don't get me wrong, I love the simplicity of decorating relatively newer buildings, as usually the plaster is flat, the woodwork is simpler, and they are often faster to do, but I do love the challenges and details of being part of the renovation process of old buildings. And although Stratford upon Avon is a relatively small town, it provides enough work for at least a h...
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Posted by Charles Budd on Monday, January 27, 2014,
Two of my favourite customers, Sally and Andy, asked me to do a complete repaint of their 9 year old bespoke kitchen in their Warwickshire cottage. It's always a pleasure to work for them, but this project was a bit special as it's such a lovely room!
Most areas were in reasonable decorative repair, but as it's an old house, quite a few cracks needed filling - particularly along the oak beams, and all the kitchen cabinets needed a lot of sanding before moving onto priming and painting. I love...
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Posted by Charles Budd on Thursday, November 7, 2013,
I just thought I'd share a
few photos of a recent job. Sorry about the quality of the photos!
Some
months ago I was approached to refresh a neutral and tired-looking sitting
room. I was too busy at the time, but gave a quote which was accepted and the
work booked in for autumn half-term while the house was empty.
The
specification was to repair some deep holes in plaster caused by redundant
light fittings, general preparation work, repaint ceiling, 3 walls, woodwork
and fireplace, and pape...
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Posted by Charles Budd on Sunday, July 7, 2013,
I'm currently painting the exterior of a customer's house. Most of the brick is unpainted, except a couple of square metres where there was a lean-to in the past. I asked my customer whether he'd like me to strip the paint off, to even it all up. He said it was a good idea.
There were several layers of gloss paint on the brick - and I knew to sand it all off would take a long time, as well as quite a lot of Abranet (the mesh sanding 'paper' I use which enables most of the dust produced by san...
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Posted by Charles Budd on Saturday, May 4, 2013,
I was asked by a regular customer to renovate a large dresser unit in her kitchen. It had been painted many times before, and the previous decorator had been asked to make it look like the rest of the natural wood kitchen. He'd decided to paint it brown, so it looked 'kind of like wood'. It didn't! The only way to really get the dresser to look like natural wood, without a huge effort of painting natural grains on it, was to completely strip it.
This particular customer has a low tolerance...
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Posted by Charles Budd on Saturday, March 2, 2013,
When starting a new decorating job we first mask and cover surfaces we're not decorating, then get on with the preparation work. There will almost always be cracks and dents to be filled, old paint to be sanded... but what often frustrates us is having to undo the previous decorator's job! One of our maxims is 'do the job well, and it'll be a lot easier to decorate next time'. So why, oh why do some decorators do things like this:
Yes, they had filled ONTO the switch with caulk, and then pai...
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Posted by Charles Budd on Monday, June 18, 2012,
I like to blame as much as I
can on Andy Crichton, yes, him off the Traditional Painter website.
It's his fault that I've spent lots of time
practicing how to use Toupret skim fillers to get a finish smoother than an
baby's bottom on walls and ceilings.
It's his fault that I've had to spend delicious
hours experimenting with Little Greene paints to get the most beautiful
eggshell finish to woodwork (they're much better than that other 'heritage'
brand that most people rave about).
And es...
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