The Steps We Take to Protect Your Home

Most homeowners don't worry about the paint. They worry about the hardwood floor, the piano and the hydrangeas by the front steps. That's fair. A paint job brings ladders, buckets, sanding dust and a crew through the parts of your home you care about most. Here's what we do to protect it, and what we ask you to do before we arrive.

Furniture: what you move, what we move

Our ask is simple. Before the crew arrives, remove small or valuable items: jewelry, dishes, framed art, anything breakable or sentimental. Our team will help protect and move larger furniture as needed. Clearing shelves and counters ahead of time also means the crew spends its day painting rather than relocating your collection.

Floors, windows and skylights

Inside, floors are covered and windows and skylights are protected. Good prep also means masking hardware, outlets and glass edges so they stay clean. Our crew has painted vaulted ceilings and open stairways, where drips have a long way to fall and ladders need careful setup, and the protection is planned for that height, not just for the floor under your feet.

Outside: siding, windows and landscaping

Outdoors, the exposure is different. During a wash, the Power Washing crew protects siding and windows from the pressure and the water. During painting, shrubs and beds get covered or tied back so nothing ends up with a coat of paint it didn't ask for. On decks, we protect the landscaping around the work even when it requires waders.

Lead-safe work in older homes

A house built before 1978 may have lead in its old paint layers. Every painter at Cloudland Paintworks is lead-safe certified, including our summer interns. Lead-safe prep and painting means containing dust and debris instead of spreading it through the house, and we give you written information about what's involved. Our Lead Paint Safety page explains it in more detail, and the same care applies on our Historical Restoration work for homes more than 50 years old.

Pets, kids and daily routines

A painting crew changes how a house works for a few days, so it helps to talk through the routine at the estimate. Which doors stay closed? Where do the dog and the kids go? Which rooms do you need to keep usable? Interior work is easier to protect when everyone knows the plan. Open stairways, wet paint and ladders don't mix with small children and curious pets, so we'd rather plan for that up front than work around it later.

Why protection takes time

Covering a house properly is slow, and it's tempting to hurry it. We think it's worth the time, because the alternative is a stray drip on a floor you can't easily replace or a window you have to scrape clean. The setup happens before painting begins, which is why you'll often see a lot of covering before you see any color. When you compare estimates, give weight to the contractor who talks about this part of the job.

Cleaning up

A job isn't finished until the house is back to normal. We clean up after ourselves. One Google reviewer wrote that the crew cleaned up after the work "without a trace," and a customer from North Haven said the painters left everything clean. That's the standard we aim for on every job, large or small.

What you can do to help

• Remove small or valuable items, and anything fragile or sentimental, before the crew arrives.
• Clear a few feet of space along the walls and around the areas being painted.
• Tell us about pets and young children so we can plan around them, especially in older homes.
• Point out the plants and landscaping you care about most, so we know what needs extra attention.
• Ask questions during the walk-around. The more we know, the better the protection plan.

Ask every painter the same thing

Whoever you hire, ask how they'll protect your floors, furniture and landscaping, and ask who handles what. If the answer is specific, that's a good sign. We spell out our process during the estimate, in writing, and we keep you informed if anything unexpected comes up. To set up a walk-through of your own house, use the Contact Us page, or call (203) 234-9542.