Exterior painting in Markham
Newer houses take a van in the driveway and a level carry for scaffold, while heritage houses have narrow doors and halls that decide how the crew stages its equipment. 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. Exterior painting is mostly prep: wash, scrape, sand, prime and caulk, then two coats of a paint built for Ontario weather.
Concept imageryMarkham, on the ground.
Markham runs from heritage frame and brick houses in the Village and Unionville, with plaster walls and painted wood siding, to newer estate housing in Cornell and Angus Glen with tall rooms and builder flat paint. 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. Heritage exteriors and trim, great rooms and foyers in new houses, whole-house interiors and cabinet refinishing are the usual Markham jobs.
An older house in Markham may sit in a heritage district, so exterior colours are chosen from palettes that suit the street and checked against the Town's guidance.
Read more about painters in Markham 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 Markham
How early in the year can you start exteriors in Markham?
Once overnight temperatures in Markham 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 Markham?
No permit is needed for painting an existing house in Markham. Heritage-designated properties can have colour rules, so if your home is listed we ask before quoting a colour change.
We are in a heritage house in Unionville. Are there rules about exterior colours?
There can be. [Markham's heritage conservation districts have guidelines on exterior colour and finish, and some changes need Town approval before work starts.] We help you choose from historically appropriate palettes in the Benjamin Moore and Sherwin-Williams lines, and the prep on old wood siding is the same regardless: wash, scrape, prime bare wood, two coats of exterior acrylic.
Our great room wall is about eighteen feet tall. How is that painted?
From a scaffold tower set on protected floors, with the crew cutting the ceiling line by hand and rolling the wall in vertical sections so the sheen stays even from top to bottom. A wall that tall shows lap marks if the roller dries between passes, so two painters work it together. The great room is its own line on the quote because of the equipment and the time.