Paint Inspection
Corey McCloskey & Greg Hudson
The Paint Inspection is Cedarglen’s quality control procedure. It is completed by your Cedarglen Site Supervisor after your prep, paint, stain and lacquer work is completed by one of our outstanding paint contractor crews. This group of men and women are responsible for the final product you see on your walls, casings and door frames, railings, and mantles, and can be thanked for bringing your home to life with vibrant colour.
Before we even start looking at the workmanship in your home, we need to make sure we got the colour right! Every Cedarglen site supervisor carries a paint colour fan in their inspection kit, and we verify that the colour code on the paint can in your home matches the colour code on your selection sheet, which matches the colour code on the fan. Then we hold the fan up to your walls and trim, and make sure that those colours match too. This is especially important if you select an accent colour as an upgrade, as some shades can look similar depending on lighting conditions throughout. Once we’re satisfied that the colours used are the colours you have picked, it’s time to get down to business.
As with all of our inspections and orientations, we start from the ensuite and move through the home from there. Much like our Drywall inspection, your site supervisor will use a 300 watt lightbulb to illuminate every inch of wall in your home and, with a trained eye, closely check for flaws in the various finishes. The wall paint is what most people think of when you mention a Paint Inspection, and for good reason: there’s paint in every room. Alberta New Home Warranty dictates that walls are free of visible defects from a distance of five feet, as viewed straight on, but at Cedarglen, we are much more particular than that. Your site supervisor will comb your walls in search of the obvious stuff: lint, drips, or other debris left behind by the rollers, light cut-ins around doors and windows and where your walls meet your texture line, even accidental bumps on the ceiling (hey, they’re only human!). But we also look for the smaller stuff, like over-rolled corner beads on arches and intersections or stretches of long, well lit hallways where walls need two coats and have to be properly back-rolled to give a consistent finish, particularly in direct sunlight.
For every painted room in your home, there’s a door, window, baseboard, or crown moulding which will require close inspection. Cedarglen’s finishing carpenters piece together their handiwork with brad nails, which leave small holes in the surface. As part of their scope of work, our painters will fill and sand these holes prior to paint, along with other obvious flaws, in an attempt to make them as close to invisible as possible, as your site supervisor is looking for them. The colour you select for the trim in your home is a lacquer, and is sprayed on with a compressor-driven gun prior to your wall paint, giving it a smooth, consistent finish. Sometimes, in corners or other small, detailed crevices, or on the vertical faces of finished carpentry, lacquer can pool up and run, drying into a faint, but noticeable to the touch, ripple in the finish. You may never notice that run under normal lighting conditions, but we will definitely find it with a 300 watt bulb and it will be repaired.
Unless you’ve chosen to go with paint-grade finishing materials throughout your home, the third component of Cedarglen’s paint inspection is the staining and clear lacquer finish. Maple is our standard wood species of choice, as it is both affordable and durable, but it does have one character istic which makes it challenging. Maple tends to take stain differently, depending on grain, cut or profile. Matching sprayed woodwork, such as railings and mantles to cabinets and floors can be more difficult, but our painters do their best, often by shading lighter areas darker; a slow and precise process to master
Any problems identified during the Cedarglen Paint Inspection are marked right on the wall with colored tape, for easy location and repair when our painters come back to check their work. We record any particular areas which may need attention on our inspection form, which immediately relays the information directly to the paint contractor on that job. We also give our painters a call so that we can communicate what we’ve seen directly, to facilitate the repairs that may have been identified. At Cedarglen, we constantly strive to improve with a goal to offer you the quality workmanship you expect in bringing your home’s colour to life.