We Are the Crew That Sands
Blackforestmeadery paints the inside of houses in Long Beach. We work out of Long Beach Blvd in the 90802 ZIP, and most of our jobs are occupied homes where the family is still cooking dinner in the middle of the work.
The reason we describe ourselves by the prep rather than by the painting is that the prep is where the difference lives. Two crews can put the same paint on the same wall and one result will look flat and even in raking afternoon light while the other shows every ridge and old lap mark. The paint was identical. The hours before it were not.
What That Looks Like on a Job
We start with a light held flat against the surface, walking each room before we quote. That is the only honest way to see what is there, because a wall viewed straight on from the middle of the room hides everything.
From there it is filling in coats rather than one heavy pass, re-fastening nail pops beside the old fixing instead of burying them, bedding tape into cracks that are movement rather than surface, and caulking the trim joints and tooling them properly before anything is topcoated. Then sanding, then a light again, then sanding the places the light found.
The Older Houses Here
A good share of the work is in the 1920s and 1930s bungalows around Belmont Heights, Rose Park and Bixby Knolls. Those walls are lath and plaster, which behaves nothing like drywall. Plaster that has lost its key needs cutting back to sound material or re-keying, not a skim of compound over a hollow area, and a texture that was applied by hand has to be matched by hand.
Those houses also predate the 1978 lead paint rules, so we test before we disturb anything and use wet methods and containment where the test is positive. Sometimes the right answer is to leave the old layer sealed and undisturbed rather than open it up at all.
On Dust
Sanding compound makes a fine dust that will find its way into a closet two rooms away if you let it. We zip the doorways, cover and tape the floors, seal the vents for the duration, run the sanders on vacuum extraction, and clean up at the end of each day rather than at the end of the week.
It adds time to the job. It is also the difference between a repaint and a fortnight of finding grit on the kitchen counter.
What We Will Tell You Not to Do
Some things are not worth your money. A ceiling with a hairline crack that has not moved in ten years usually does not need to be taped and re-textured. A wall in a spare room nobody sits in does not need the same flattening as a hallway with a window at one end. We will say so, and quote both ways if you want to see the difference.
Call (562) 399-6337.