The stone house
We spent over two years painting this house, working from 4:30 AM to 8:00 PM every day. The people around us often called us “the crazy hour painters.”
All the woodwork was done with sprayers, and as you can see from the pictures, the entire house was finished like an automotive paint job, with a crisp, flawless finish throughout.
We had to use a special primer that mimicked automotive primer, which allowed us to sand all the details and make three, sometimes four, different types of wood look like one seamless piece.
Then there’s the “Flex Molding” — a rubberized trim that makes it possible to work with rounded walls and corners. As the name suggests, the material is flexible, and when it’s nailed in place, it creates dimples on the surface. That presented a challenge in itself, but we managed to handle it. Using a technique I learned from my father in Brazil, we were able to resolve the issue without any trouble.
It was a beautiful project, and we were proud to be a part of it.
Here you can see that there is no transition
from the top piece to the side and
no dimple caused by poor nail fillers or caulking
Smooth surface done with
airless sprayers living a perfect
run and brush free marks
MDF panels that look like a car part
from a showroom
Again, no nails or router marks
just a beautiful glass look to it.
The circles and any other curved parts of the trim work were done with a rubberized trim called FLEX TRIM.
Because of its rubberized properties, when installed with nails it creates a dimple or, in this case, hundreds of dimples, and to get a desirable finish it took a lot of sanding and filling to get a smooth and yet sharp edges finish.
Every day at 4:30 AM
Foyer before
Hallway circle
The craftsman skills of the carpenter were impeccable. If you look from any of the ends of the hallway you will see all the arches perfectly aligned in each center, so the painter (us in this case) had to come up to the plate, and we did, spending an average of 2 days on each piece. They looked just like a body of a car straight from the factory.
The foyer is the main event, the "WOW!" part of the show. So, just for the ceiling, we used about $2000 worth of paint. Yes, just the ceiling.
At $90 per quart, and about 30 ft. high, there was no room for error, I was spraying with a airless tip of 27 inches at close range to minimize overspray and waist. And boy, that ceiling looks good!
And I mean every day!
Before top foyer
After top foyer
Hallway circle