To the untrained eye, there does not appear to be much of a difference between masonry paint and specialist wall coatings. They are both coloured liquids designed to bring a pleasing appearance to the exterior of a house, however upon closer examination, the differences between paint and a wall coating become increasingly evident.
This homeowner had a local builder work on their home, however the results they got were far from pleasing, so they kicked him off the job and contacted us instead.
After all, if you’re going to renovate a home exterior, it’s at least worth the effort to do it properly!
This is a project case study on a home we externally refurbished, on the island of Anglesey, off the coast of North Wales.
Ordinary masonry paint, the type you find in Wickes or B&Q, will deteriorate very quickly, which leaves your property vulnerable to amassing defects such as damp or cracks in the walls.
A Never Paint Again exterior wall coating is strong enough to protect a property from harm for up to 20 years, whereas masonry paint will break down after only a few months, sooner on coastal and seaside homes.
You cannot really compare ordinary masonry paint, however notable the brand, with a specialist applied exterior wall coating.
One big advantage of our textured exterior wall coating system is the fact that as it much thicker than masonry paint, it can cover scars and blemishes on exterior walls that masonry paint would never be able to do.
This was especially important as the homeowner had sadly employed a cowboy builder previous to ourselves, who, and I am being brutal here, made a right mess of the rendering.
From our point of view it very much looked like the renderer was inexperienced and tried to bluff their way into the customers wallet.
Here is the poor state of the newly applied render when we arrived.
It still baffles me why, if someone has a house worth hundreds of thousands of pounds, they should go and choose the absolute cheapest quote for home improvements, rather than the best company to do the work.
This homeowner sheepishly found that out the hard (and expensive) way.
Pay cheap, pay twice.
No matter what home improvement job you are looking to have done this year, we always recommend getting 3 quotes, and never ever choose the cheapest, or choose someone who can start right away.
Back to the job in hand, the state of the render was shocking and we had to do quite a bit of remedial work to the walls before we could start painting.
We had to completely re render parts of the house to correct the previous poor quality work
As you can see we already laid dust sheets on the ground and had masked up the windows to avoid any mess whilst the work was taking place.
The making good of the render continued throughout the exterior of the house.
This is a direct comparison between a “cash in hand if you don’t mind love” local builder, and a professional company such as ourselves. You get what you pay for.
Quite how the previous builder thought their work was acceptable beggars belief.
Here is the house in its preparation stage: We have to make the walls 100% before we start to paint
There’s certainly no comparison between paint and an exterior wall coating in this case.
If the bad render had been painted over, as it was, with masonry paint, it would have looked terrible.
Here is the front of the house in it’s rendered state
At this point we had already smoothed out the rough bits of render and made good where necessary and we could then move onto the next stage of applying a long life exterior wall coating.
Luckily we are well known trusted tradesmen in the area and have done much house painting work in Anglesey before now, and our team are both Welshmen and are well liked in the area so the customer was completely reassured.
BTW, Anglesey is known by Welsh speakers as Ynys Môn
Once all the repairs and tidying up was completed we masked up the whole house and applied a weatherproof primer coat by hand to all walls;
We always use 2 coats of wall coating like this, in comparison to your local painted and decorator who will try and get away with only ONE coat of paint, that in itself much thinner than our wall coating system.
Once this was dry, the next day we set up our spray machine to apply a generous coat of Wethertex MP44 exterior textured wall coating.
This wall coating, compared to paint, lasts over 20 years and will not crack, flake, fade or peel, whereas paint would only last a year and half before having to pay someone to do it again.
Here we see the front of house after having an exterior wall coating applied to it.
Walking around the rest of the house, each elevation turned out absolutely spot on.
None of the poor render could be seen, and the customer was delighted.
If only they have come to us 1st!
The side of the house with a brand new paint scheme and looking great, especially compared to what it looked like beforehand!
The rear of the house looked equally spick and span, and compared to bare render as it was, this is a 200% improvement!
Note how clean and tidy we leave each job, no mess to clean up once the workmen have left, compared to your local builder who will leave mess around your home after he has finished.
Above all a lesson was learnt here.
You cannot compare paint to an exterior wall coating in terms of durability, colour fastness, weather protection and overall durability.
As this system only has to be applied ONCE in 20 years, it saves the homeowner times, money and hassle.
If you pay the cheapest quote, you get the cheapest quality work.
We don’t “do” cheap, we never have done and never will, which is why since 1986, we have made countless houses up down the country into homes to be proud of.
If this sort of system interest you then why not drop us a line and have a quick chat about your home, what you want doing to it, and how we can help you.
We recommend you get at least 3 quotes so as to compare the difference between paying someone to do a cheap job, or paying someone to do it properly.
No comparison really.
We work up down the whole of Wales, and England to, and all quotes are free and without any hard sell.
Just give us a call on 0800 970 4928 or drop us an email, we look forward to hearing from you.