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Exterior painting in Scarborough
Driveways are wide and front doors open onto a short hall, so the crew can park on site and stage ladders, planks and sprayers in the garage. 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 imageryScarborough, on the ground.
Scarborough is largely postwar bungalows and side-splits with drywall walls, textured popcorn ceilings and brick or stucco exteriors. 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. Whole-house interiors with ceilings, stairwells in side-splits, trim and doors, and exterior brick, stucco and trim make up most of the Scarborough work.
In Scarborough the ceiling is often the biggest decision in the house, so we price painting the texture and removing it as two separate options.
Read more about painters in Scarborough 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 Scarborough
How early in the year can you start exteriors in Scarborough?
Once overnight temperatures in Scarborough 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 Scarborough?
No permit is needed for painting an existing house in Scarborough. Heritage-designated properties can have colour rules, so if your home is listed we ask before quoting a colour change.
Should we paint our popcorn ceiling or have it removed?
Both are done in Scarborough bungalows. Painting is the smaller job: the texture is sealed, stains are blocked with a shellac primer and the ceiling is rolled with a deep-pile sleeve. Removal means scraping, skimming the drywall flat, sanding and priming before paint, which is more days and more dust but leaves a modern ceiling. [Texture applied before 1980 may contain asbestos and should be tested before scraping.] We quote both so you can choose.
How do you reach the tall wall above the stairs in a side-split?
With a plank set between a ladder on the landing and a ladder on the stair, levelled and secured, or an adjustable stair ladder where the flight is narrow. The crew masks the railing and protects the treads before anything goes up. It is routine for us, but it is a reason the stairwell is listed as its own line on the quote.