Winter care for your property – interiors
All this water can cause endless problems, and it can be a real headache to get rid of the effects. I hope you’ve escaped any flooding, but even without that there can be plenty of issues to deal with. Leaving aside the exterior problems that come with the cold and the wet and the winds…
Decorating advice for Landlords and Property Management Agents
Landlords and Property Management Agents sometimes ask our advice for maintaining paintwork in apartment blocks. This includes in-between tenancy commercial decorating as well as regular cyclical maintenance of common spaces and exteriors, as well as Section 20 and JCT decorating work. Durability We’d always recommend focusing on practical and durable finishes, whether the buildings are for…
Winter care for your woodwork
This is the time of year when you might start to notice any defects or problems with your external decorating. Cold weather, high winds, frost and heavy rainfall are going to expose any frailties in the protection that external paintwork is supposed to give to wooden window and door frames, and the soffits beneath the…
Is it worth paying more for Farrow & Ball?
It’s a question that comes up frequently. With Farrow & Ball paints often costing twice or three times as much as comparable Deluxe and Crown paints – both good quality brands – is it really worth paying the extra? Will you be able to tell the difference? From a professional decorator’s viewpoint, here’s what I…
Choosing white paint – simple, surely?
Recently we’ve seen some customers getting very creative with their use of different shades of white and it got me thinking. Always dangerous. It won’t surprise you to hear that white is the most popular paint colour. But white comes in a wide range of shades – even “Pure Brilliant White” can vary considerably between manufacturers. Here’s…
Redecorating boosts your house value – but what colours sell best?
When I was just a lad, I convinced my Dad to let me decorate my own room. Today, as my bank account waves farewell to yet another mortgage payment, I spare my Dad a thought as I think what the orange wallpaper and purple paint did to the value of the family home. Regular readers…
A useful tool for surveyors and architects
Dulux have had a tablet or phone-based colour-picking app, aimed at home users, for some time. It’s quite handy – some people love it, others find it a bit gimmicky – but it does tend to make you think about diffferent colour combinations. Now they have a comparable app for professionals. Architects, designers and specifiers…
Summer decorating in Wimbledon
With Wimbledon just down the road from our offices, and the best summer since – well, since last year – it can be hard to stay tuned in to work. Thankfully, the weather is perfect for exterior painting and you, dear customer, are keeping us busy. And so you should – it’s the perfect time…
More useful cleaning tips from your decorator
Regular readers will know that my newsletters are always strictly on-message and never stray from the business of painting and decorating. Well, hardly ever. So, as the Spring-cleaning season opens, some TIMELY and RELEVANT words on care of paintwork and walls. Where possible, we hope you’ll avoid the use of power-tools and wire brushes on the…
Cleaning walls: Your decorator speaks…
Maybe it’s genetic, but with the first rays of sun and green shoots starting to peek through, even your humble decorator is starting to think of spring-cleaning. I thought some tips on handling paintwork might not be amiss. You most likely have some form of emulsion paint on your walls. If we did the painting,…
How to prepare for your decorator
People who value my opinion – yes, both of them – sometimes want to know what’s the best way to prepare for the decorators. Apart from leaving the country, I tell them, there are some sensible things to bear in mind. We’ll assume that you already know what paint you want, that you have chosen…
Planning your redecoration: a useful checklist
Redecorating your home (or office) is going to involve a certain amount of disruption, like it or not. Good decorators* will keep it at a minimum, but I thought a planning checklist might be useful. It might help to give an idea of how much work will be needed, and how long it may take. (*The term…
Resources for choosing paint colours
There’s nothing as individual as choosing colours. You can get endless advice on the internet, not to mention friends and relatives. You might even appreciate some of it. As decorators we’ve learned to be careful about offering opinions – but it’s nice to know what is possible and what’s out there. Here are links to the…
Three things to check on the house in July
I like to think I’m a manly sort of man. I know which end of a screwdriver to hold, and I have plenty of good words for when electrical items don’t work. So I was drawn to a website called “The Art of Manliness” – just to see if they had it right, you understand.…
How to clean paintwork – a useful email, at last
I promised you a useful email, and at last here it is. We only deal with a better class of client, and we know you will want to treat our beautiful paintwork with the love it deserves after we have packed up and gone home. But accidents happen. In the photo above some child prodigy has…
It’s officially (nearly) spring. What colours are we picking this year?
Sky-high house prices in London are resulting in a lot more home improvements. And we’re always happy to help. I happened to be looking at some old paint charts and thought it was interesting how much they reflect the times. The 1970’s look very strange – here’s the Dulux catalogue from 1975: And this shows the…
What goes into your housepaint?
Feel a touch of Spring in the air? Just the tiniest whiff? As we move ever closer to Spring-cleaning time, a fresh crop of Dulux and Farrow & Ball colour charts have started to poke their heads though the snow. But since most of us spend our lives entirely surrounded by paint (yes, it’s everywhere…
Decorators tips: How to hang your Christmas decorations.
Lesson One: hanging on brick walls Planning to decorate the house this year? Perhaps you like the understated elegance of this example? Even if you’re not so brave, I thought you might like a decorator’s tips on how to make decorations stay up without incurring a repair bill in the New Year, so here are some…
Decorating tips – and some new words
As I drive around London in my van I have to think about something. So what about this: Is there a collective noun for decorators? I sometimes use old-fashioned anglo-saxon words to talk about my workmen, but really they are warm and cuddly people. They deserve a proper collective noun, one that isn’t a swear-word.…
Batman in your bedroom?
If you want to get creative, read this first I read two stories about Star Trek themed houses this week. Both of them (surprise!) in the USA. One fan spent $300,000 on converting his New York basement into the bridge of the USS Enterprise. The other did an entire house in Florida. Surprisingly, at least one of…