Old paint behaves differently from new paint, and Canton has plenty of both.
- Older homes
- Plaster, layered coatings, settled surfaces
- Newer homes
- Drywall, builder-grade, straightforward
- Test first
- Old layers can react to a new coat
In the historic streets around Main Street you are often painting over four or five generations of previous work. Those layers can be anything — oil under latex, distemper under oil, a patch someone did in the eighties with whatever was in the garage. A modern coating going over that can lift, crawl or refuse to bond, and you find out a day after the wall looked finished.
That is why we test an area before committing a whole room in older Canton houses. It costs an hour and it prevents the job where you strip a wall back twice. Plaster also fills and primes differently from drywall, and the settled cracks that come with an old house need a filler that will move slightly rather than one that will crack again in a season.
Older Canton houses, specifically
Test patches before committing a full room
Filling chosen for surfaces that still move
Plaster primed differently from drywall
Original trim repaired and repainted, not replaced
Colour and sheen matched to woodwork that stays