Areas / Thornbury
Painters in Thornbury
Californian bungalows and interwar brick on blocks deep enough to work from. Rooms in these houses are taller than they are wide, which puts more of the job over your head than in any newer home.
Bungalow country
Deep eaves and three metre ceilings
- Deep eaves, and the lining under themThe bungalow was built to throw shade, so the eaves reach well out from the wall and the soffit lining underneath them never sees direct sun. That is exactly why it goes first: it stays damp longer after rain and nobody looks up at it until it is flaking. From the footpath it is invisible, which is how a house ends up with a good looking wall and a soffit that has been gone for years.
- Rooms taller than they are wideThree metre ceilings in a bedroom four metres across is normal here. More of the surface in these houses is above your head than in anything built since, and it is all reached from a platform rather than standing on the floor. It also means the ceiling and the cornice carry the room, which is why they get their own section below.
- A hallway running the whole lengthThe central hall in these homes is long, narrow and gets no daylight of its own. Every bedroom door, every architrave and often an arch open off it. Cutting in there is slow work, done under a proper light rather than by what comes through the front door, because a missed edge in a dim hallway only appears when somebody switches a lamp on at night.
- Blocks deep enough to work fromCompared with the inner suburbs there is genuine room here: a driveway, a side path and a back yard that gear can sit in. That sounds like a small thing and it is not. Being able to stage a full elevation at once, leave a platform standing overnight and keep materials out of the weather takes real days off an exterior, and it is part of why the same size house costs less to paint here than four kilometres closer to town.
- The bungalow at the back of the blockA great many of these properties have a separate room out the back: an old sleepout, a studio, a converted garage. They are usually lightly built, often unlined or lined in something unusual, and they have been repainted by whoever owned the house at the time. They are quick work once the substrate is identified, and expensive guesswork when it is not.
Ceilings
The ceiling is not a wall lying down
In a house with three metre ceilings it is the largest unbroken surface you own, and the least forgiving one. Here is what actually decides how it turns out.
- Light travels across it, not at itDaylight from a window runs along a ceiling almost flat, so every fill, every roller stop and every join throws its own small shadow. The same defect on a wall is lit straight on and disappears. That is the whole reason ceilings are harder, and the reason one gets finished in a single continuous run rather than picked up again after lunch.
- Not every crack is the same crackFine lines that wander are the old plaster shrinking and they fill and stay filled. A straight crack that follows a join, or one that reopens in the same place every summer, is the building moving and it will come back through anything laid over it. We tell you which kind you have before quoting, because one is a morning of filling and the other is a conversation about whether to line the ceiling.
- Water stains get sealed, never just coveredThe brown ring from an old roof leak or a bathroom above is not dirt, it is soluble and it travels. Painted over with ordinary ceiling white it comes back through within weeks, sometimes within days, and each new coat makes it slightly worse. It takes a stain blocking sealer first. Two coats of white on top of an unsealed stain is money thrown away twice.
- Flat finish, and there is no argumentAny sheen at all on a ceiling turns raking daylight into a map of every roller pass. Ceilings take a dead flat paint. The one exception is a bathroom or a laundry, where moisture makes a low sheen worth the trade, and even there it is the lowest sheen that will do the job.
- The line where the cornice stopsOn a moulded cornice there is no natural edge to work to, so the line is decided by hand and then has to hold for the length of the room. Get it wavy and the eye follows it around the whole space. Most of the skill in painting one of these rooms sits in that one line, which is exactly why a room with a plain square set cornice runs quicker than one with mouldings.
- Pressed metal and ripple ironKitchens and halls in this part of Melbourne sometimes have a metal ceiling, either pressed panels or the corrugated ripple iron. They are worth keeping and they are not painted like plaster: any rust spots get treated, the surface takes a metal primer, and it goes on thin enough that the pattern stays crisp instead of filling in. Loaded up with heavy coats they lose the detail that made them worth having.
What we can do here
Painting services in Thornbury
The same range we bring to any Melbourne home, whether the job is one room or the whole house inside and out. In Thornbury a good share of it is over your head: ceilings, cornices, the hallway and the lining under the eaves.
Who we work with
Whose job is it
A homeowner, a builder, a business owner and someone with a period house worry about completely different things. Pick the one that fits and you will get the answers written for you.
Residential
Homeowners
- You stay in the house while we work
- Covers down before anything starts
- One fixed price, not an hourly rate
Trade
Builders
- We hold the date we gave you
- Sequenced around the trades behind us
- Priced in a day or two
Commercial
Commercial
- Staged or overnight, you keep trading
- Access and hours agreed up front
- Shops, offices, schools, warehouses
Heritage
Heritage
- Ornate plaster cut in by hand
- Old surfaces sanded, not covered
- Council checked before colour
Painting a bungalow in Thornbury?
Tell us the address and what you are planning. We will come and look, tell you honestly what needs doing first, then give you one fixed price.
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Get in touch
Request a free quote
Tell us about your project and we'll get back to you, usually within a day, with a fixed, no-surprises quote.
+61 415 751 399
Elitemasterpainting@hotmail.com
Melbourne wide, from the bayside suburbs to the outer east. Happy to travel further for larger projects.
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