About Cinemadumeep

The Wall Nobody Looks At Until April

Cinemadumeep is a house painting outfit working out of Walnut St in the 91104 ZIP, covering Pasadena and the towns along the base of the San Gabriels. Most of our work is exterior, and most of the exterior work concentrates on two walls out of four.

That is not a business decision. It is what the sun does. A house here presents the same four faces to a very uneven amount of ultraviolet, and the two that take the afternoon age on a schedule of their own.

How We Got Specific About It

Painting whole houses on a fixed cycle is how most of the trade quotes, and it is wasteful in both directions. It repaints north walls that had years left, and it leaves west walls sitting past the point where the coating stopped protecting anything. After enough estimates where the homeowner said some version of “it is really only that side”, we started writing the sun side as its own line on every quote.

The practical result is that a fair number of our jobs are two elevations rather than four. Occasionally we walk a property, find the fade uniform and the film intact, and tell somebody to wash the house and call us in three years. We would rather do that than sell a repaint that a wall did not need.

What We Actually Care About On Site

Preparation, because it is most of the labour and all of the durability. Washing to remove chalk, scraping to sound edges, feathering so the repair does not read through the finish, caulking the joints that opened over the summer, and priming what the primer is actually for. A bonding primer, a stain blocker and a masonry primer are three different products solving three different problems, and using the cheapest of them everywhere is how a good paint ends up failing.

After that, pigment. We will tell you plainly which colours hold on a west wall and which ones will look tired by the sixth summer. Iron oxides and other inorganic pigments are the ones that stay. Saturated organics are the ones that go. That is chemistry, not opinion, and knowing it before you pick a colour is worth more than any product upgrade.

On Older Houses

Pasadena has a lot of pre-1978 building stock, including the Craftsman bungalows people move here for. Those houses come with lead paint underneath, plaster walls rather than drywall inside, and exposed rafter tails that need end grain sealing rather than another coat of body colour. We work them wet, contained and cleaned up, which costs more and takes longer than the alternative. There is no version of this job where that part is optional.

Call (626) 333-4716 or come by 5974 Walnut St, Pasadena, CA 91104. We will walk the property in the afternoon, when the light shows what is actually going on.