Exterior painting in Aurora
Exterior painting is mostly prep: wash, scrape, sand, prime and caulk, then two coats of a paint built for Ontario weather. Aurora has century houses with plaster front rooms and later drywall additions in the older core, and newer subdivision housing with nine foot ceilings and builder flat paint east and north of it. Older houses bring wood siding, cedar trim and layered paint that needs scraping and priming, and newer ones bring stucco, fibre cement and vinyl that need the right primer and a vinyl-safe colour.
Concept imageryAurora, on the ground.
Driveways are deep and garages attached in the newer areas, while the older core has narrower drives and a step up at the back door, and the crew books full days because of the drive. The crew washes and dries the house, scrapes and primes failing areas, masks windows and plants, paints the body then the trim and walks the property with you at the end.
Where a Aurora house has a later addition, the plaster and the drywall are prepped differently and finished to the same sheen so the join does not show.
Read more about painters in Aurora or the full exterior painting page.
On the quote, from the start.
- 01A full walk around the house in daylight, with loose paint, soft wood and failed caulking marked before the quote
- 02Pressure wash or hand wash to remove chalk, mildew and dirt, then a drying period before any paint
- 03Scraping and sanding of failing paint, feathered edges, and spot or full priming where bare material shows
- 04New caulking at trim joints, window frames and siding ends so water stays out
- 05Two coats of exterior acrylic on siding and trim, brushed and rolled or sprayed and back-brushed depending on the surface
- 06Plants tied back, windows and hardscape masked, daily clean-up and a walk around with you at the end
No figures published. The drivers, in order.
| Driver | What we look at |
|---|---|
| Surface and its condition | Sound siding needing a wash and two coats is the baseline. Peeling paint, bare wood and failed caulking add scraping, priming and repair hours. |
| Height and access | A bungalow is reached from ladders. A two or three-storey house with steep grades may need staging or a lift. |
| Material | Smooth siding rolls quickly. Rough stucco, brick and cedar drink more paint and take more time per square metre. |
| Trim, doors and detail | Window grilles, shutters, railings and decorative trim are brushed by hand and add time out of proportion to their area. |
The season and the weather set the schedule as much as the scope does. We quote from a walk around the house, not from a photo, and the quote separates the body of the house from the trim.
Exterior painting questions from Aurora
How early in the year can you start exteriors in Aurora?
Once overnight temperatures in Aurora stay above the paint's limit and the surfaces are dry. That is usually [May] for standard paint and a few weeks earlier with the low-temperature lines. We book spring exteriors over the winter.
Do I need a permit to paint my house in Aurora?
No permit is needed for painting an existing house in Aurora. Heritage-designated properties can have colour rules, so if your home is listed we ask before quoting a colour change.
How do you paint the upstairs hallway wall that runs down the stairs?
With a plank between a ladder on the upper landing and an adjustable ladder on the stair, levelled and secured, and the railing padded. The crew cuts the ceiling line by hand and rolls the wall in one continuous pass so the sheen does not change halfway down. In a newer Aurora house that wall and the foyer are the two items the quote lists on their own.
Our Aurora house is plaster at the front and drywall in the addition. Will the two look the same once painted?
Yes, if the prep is matched. Plaster takes more filling and a full primer over old repairs, drywall takes less, but both end in the same two finish coats at the same sheen. Where the texture differs noticeably at the joint, the crew skims the transition so the eye does not catch it. The colour change, if there is one, is placed at a doorway rather than along the seam.