In Atwater
Exterior repaint, white to charcoal on an Atwater home
A single-storey home in Atwater taken from white stucco with a red-brick base to charcoal throughout — walls, brick, garage door and trim, all in one dark colour.
What we started with
White stucco above a red-brick course, with the two fighting each other from the street. The owner wanted the whole elevation to read as one thing rather than three.
What we did
The eaves were masked off along the full run of the roof and the base of the walls papered before spraying started. The stucco, the brick course and the garage door were all taken to the same charcoal, with the roof left as it was.
Painting brick is a one-way decision
Masonry can be painted and it can be painted well, but it does not go back. Once a brick course has been coated it needs recoating from then on, because stripping paint out of the face of brick without damaging it is not realistic on a house of this size. That is worth saying out loud before the job starts rather than afterwards.
Done properly it also has to breathe. Brick holds moisture and a coating that seals it completely traps that water behind the paint, which is how blistering starts a couple of summers later.
One colour across three surfaces
The stucco, the brick and the metal garage door are three different materials that take paint three different ways — different absorbency, different texture, different sheen once it dries. Getting them to read as a single flat colour from the street is a question of preparation and of the right product on each, not of using the same tin everywhere and hoping.
Dark colours and Atwater summers
A charcoal exterior in the Central Valley gets genuinely hot. Dark surfaces move more than pale ones as they heat and cool, which puts more work on the caulking and the preparation underneath. It is a good-looking choice and it is a demanding one, and the demands are met before the colour goes on, not after.
Both photographs are taken from the same spot on the front lawn, on the same kind of clear Valley afternoon.
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