The Wall That Faces the Water
Art-deco is a painting outfit based on Arizona Ave in Santa Monica, in the 90403 ZIP. We paint houses, apartment buildings and the odd small commercial front, and over the years the work has narrowed toward one problem that everyone here has and nobody quotes honestly: the seaward elevation wears out on a completely different schedule from the rest of the building.
Most painters price a house as one number. Four sides, one product, one cycle. That is simple to sell and it quietly overcharges the owner whose north and east walls are still perfectly sound, while under-serving the west wall that needed a different coating three years ago.
Why Salt Changes the Job
Marine air carries chloride inland as a fine aerosol. It settles on whatever faces it, and because salt is hygroscopic it holds moisture out of the fog against the paint film long after the sun has come up. The result is a wall that is damp for more hours a day than the same wall on the sheltered side, with a mildly corrosive salt film sitting in that damp.
Under those conditions coatings lose adhesion at cut edges and around fasteners first. Nail heads and screw heads bleed rust. Stucco hairlines wick. Gloss dulls and chalks faster because UV on the same west and south faces is doing its own work in the afternoon. By the time an owner notices, it is usually one or two elevations that need everything and two that need washing.
How We Work
We survey each face on its own and we take a moisture reading on stucco before anyone proposes a coating. If a wall is taking water from a failed parapet, a window head or a planter sitting tight against the render, sealing it with a high build elastomeric makes it worse, not better. Finding that water source is part of the survey, and we would rather lose the job than coat over it.
Then it is the unglamorous part. Wash the salt off. Scrape and feather the failed film. Caulk the joints. Prime the bare substrate with the right primer for what is underneath, bonding, stain blocking or masonry, because those three are not interchangeable and using the cheap one is where a repaint goes wrong. Two coats over any colour change, without exception.
What We Will Tell You
If the sheltered sides of your house are sound, we will say so and quote the sides that are not. If a full exterior is not in this year’s budget, doing the seaward elevation now and the rest later is a real strategy in this city rather than a compromise. And if the fog has not cleared and the surface is sitting near dew point, we will not open a bucket, because paint applied onto a damp film is money burned on a schedule.
We are a small crew. We mask, we contain, we clean up daily, and we do not leave an occupied house open overnight or block a whole block of permit parking for a week.
Call (424) 320-8137 or find us at 9699 Arizona Ave, Santa Monica, CA 90403 for a survey and a written scope.