Give Your Home’s Exterior a Face Lift

Freshening up the exterior of your dwelling can add immediate value to your home and increase its curb appeal. However, doing so can also be a big commitment – in both time and money – so make sure you get the job done right the first time by consulting experts at a specialty paint store.

From planning to application to clean up, a specialty paint store can help make the project a smooth one with professional tips and expert advice. This type of store can also help with color selection, choosing products that will last for years to come and determining the right tools needed for the job.

When preparing to paint your home’s exterior, one of the first tasks at hand is to select color, and there are a variety of tools available to help you choose just the right hue. For example, Sherwin-Williams offers an online color visualizer that allows you to experiment with hundreds of shades before you even leave your house. Once at the store, to inspire your creativity, the company has idea cards available to help you visualize how to use a particular color, be it on the front door, shutters or main facade. You can also refer to generously sized 3 X 5-inch take-home samples, available with suggestions for complementary colors noted on the back of each paint chip.

Once you’ve chosen your colors, it is important to buy exceptional quality paint products. When it comes to paint, you definitely get what you pay for, and when you put a lot of energy into an exterior painting project, you want it to look fabulous for decades.

A specialty paint store can offer advice on choosing the right product needed for the job. For example, Sherwin-Williams innovative paint, Resilience, allows you to get the job done even if rain is in the forecast. And with just two coats, it’s guaranteed to last for as long as you own your home. Resilience is made with MoistureGuard technology to provide superior moisture resistance—and it cures in about half the time of most conventional exterior paints. Resilience ensures you will not have to forfeit a weekend paint job due to impending bad weather.

After you’ve made your color and product choices, a specialty paint store is your one-stop shop for purchasing tools to help you complete the project. Ask about quality exterior brushes and rollers, which are sturdier than their interior counterparts and will give you better results. After the colors and products have been chosen, the tools have been prepped and you have your game-face on, the fun begins! For more tips, tools and techniques for exterior painting, visit the Sherwin-Williams website or your neighborhood Sherwin-Williams paint store. To receive a FREE estimate for any paint job, please call Five Star Painting at 1-866-965-STAR or visit our website.

How Can Social Media Improve Business?

It is time to advertise online using social media. 2009 was a pretty wild year in the world of marketing. While social media was building up steam in previous years, it pretty much went mainstream this past year. As the hype mediated and people began to understand how to use these new programs, more change was developing. The expansion of social media in 2009 prepared some significant trends to pop up into the world of small business in 2010.

Most accounts for advertising through social media are free, but for some you will need to be educated on how to function them. Because social media is so cost effective, you can determine the cost by choosing how much production time you want to put into your content. Professional quality is extremely crucial.

The major goal is to stay on a personal level, so that you get a connection with your audience. It is to share one’s voice, to be authentic, and to encourage a community. Others will notice that they can relate to you in similar experiences. The more the audience connects with your business, the more they will want to work with you. When a business owner shares their passion through social media, it really shows how much they love their work. It can be far more effective compared to an ad.

Here are some ideas before you jump into the social media scene:

• Find out what forms of social media your clients or customers use. The most popular are Facebook, Twitter, and blogs.
• Search the forms of social media that your business could benefit from.
• Use advertising content that you already have and be creative with new ideas for new content.

Below are a few tips when maintaining your accounts for social media:

• Answers your readers’ emails
• Be prepared to speak with customers
• Keep your content original
• Good quality design and easy to read

We will see small business owners finally start to embrace these significant expansions in the New Year. It is essential to understand how social media plays a beneficial role in your business. You would be surprised the number of customers social media brings in. It also expands your search engine optimization, which improves the volume or quality of traffic to your website in a natural or unpaid way. To better your understanding, you can sign up for webinars regarding Social Media 101.

Temperature Issues & Touching Up

Service Temperatures

Here is the scale for the maximum service temperature for paints:

• Latex and oil: 200˚F or 90˚C
• Epoxies: 300˚F or 150˚C
• Aluminum: 400˚F or 200˚C
• Inorganic Zinc: 750˚F or 400˚C

*These products will fail if they are exposed to temperatures higher than listed above.

Thermal Tack

Thermal tack is caused when the humidity and temperature rise enough to make the coating soften on latex gloss and semi-gloss paints. Even if the paint was applied a long time ago, this problem may still occur. The surface will become tacky to the touch initially, but will go away once the temperature and humidity drop. In areas where this might happen on a frequent basis, it would be wise to paint front doors and jams in an oil based paint instead. If the doors become tacky, they tend to stick to the weatherproofing and cause a mess.

Paint Viscosity

The thickness or viscosity of the paint depends greatly on the temperature of the paint. When a paint is colder, the molecules huddle together as if they were cold, which makes the paint thick. When you try and apply that paint to the wall, it will tend to sag and will not flow very well because of its viscosity level. On the flip side, warmer molecules want to spread out, which almost thin the paint. Because of this, the paint will go on too lightly and you will have problems with coverage. For the best results, try and regulate the temperature of your paint by having it be between 70˚F or 21˚C and 77˚F or 25˚C before you start to paint.

Sheens and Touch Ups

Touching something up can sometimes be a difficult thing to do. It is quite dependant on the sheen, the type (latex or oil), and the age of the paint. First, let’s talk about oil paints. Oil eggshell and semi-glosses will lose a quarter to a third of their sheen after about three months. Trying to touch up a surface that has been painted with that type of paint after the three months could be very obvious. It is better to repaint the entire area instead of just touching it up. Latex paints also tend to lose their gloss, but at a much slower rate and quantity as oil paints. Latex paints are easier to touch up, but remember that you might have some flashing depending on the amount of time since the original paint was applied. With oil and latex paint, you also might run into the problem of fading paint due to sun or other environmental issues. Fortunately, both oil and latex flats are the easiest to touch up, even after a period of time. A quick tip: using an HVLP to touch up the surfaces seems to blend the sheen differences the best.

Temperature Ranges

Be sure to do any touch ups to a surface at the same temperature in which the original paint was applied. There is a rule of thumb in the painting world, that you should not paint any surface below 50˚F or 10˚C, or if that surface will dip down below that temperature at night, until the paint has sufficiently dried. There are, however, some paints out there that have been developed to extend the exterior painting season that will allow the paint to be applied in 35˚F or 2˚C, (ICI’s Fortis and This Old House). If you do touch up something under the recommended temperature, it might dry a little lighter than the original paint. Therefore be sure to apply the touch up paint at the same temperature in which the original coat was applied.

Touch Up Applicators

(This is especially true for smooth walls.) If you are going to touch up a surface, make sure that you use the same applicator as was used originally. Different applicators leave different finishes on the surface. It would be very obvious if there were a brush mark in the middle of a rolled wall. Try and be consistent with the applicators you use and you will find that you will have better results. The more the wall is textured, the easier it is to touch up using any tool, even using a brush over a rolled surface.

Primer 101

Preparation is the key to beautiful, long-lasting results for any painting task. Why spend all that time choosing astounding paint colors for your living room remodel or baby’s first nursery if you aren’t going to take the first step to ensure your new colors will withstand the test of time? Five Star Painting is proud to be partnered up with Sherwin Williams who has supplied us with great insight regarding the prep-work to any paint job.

Often forgotten, primers are made to help your finish coat be smooth and uniform. They can save several hours of time and several dollars. Some are formulated specifically to cover stains and discoloration, block out odors, hide surface marks and there are even primers that are made especially for use with dark vivid colors. All primers help to anchor the finish coat so it “sticks” better, ensure a rich shine for enamels, fill uneven surfaces and seal porous surfaces.

Prime for the Pickin’

When deciding which primer best suits your paint project, there are a couple of important elements you should take into consideration. One is the surface to be painted. Whether the surface you are painting is drywall in your brand new home, older wood in your basement or concrete in your stylish loft, there are ideal primers for each surface to ensure that the finish coat offers optimal beauty and protection.

Another important element to consider when choosing a primer is the paint color. Testing by the experts has found that often deep paint colors are best primed with gray-tint shades, and for this reason special primers have been designed to maximize deep hues. For example, the Sherwin-Williams Color Prime System has gray-tint shades for primers to achieve a true color in fewer coats. Another way to make those bold accent colors pop is to refer to the back of the color chip for primer recommendations. For example, deep, saturated colors are extremely popular for the home right now. To get the best possible results for these bold colors, a gray-tint primer is an ideal choice.

An interior latex primer is the perfect selection for most home painting projects. It goes on easy, dries fast and provides the best coverage on a variety of new or previously painted surfaces, such as wood, plaster and drywall. And clean-up can be a snap, with just soap and water.

Remember that primer can often make or break your paint project. In the long run, using primer will save you time and money by reducing the number of times you need to paint or repaint a surface. Choosing the perfect primer for the job can be simplified by seeking expert advice at an area paint store. For more information on primers, please check out our website or visit your neighborhood Sherwin-Williams.

The Motivation of an Entrepreneur

Running your own business isn’t for everyone. Most cannot deal with the huge time, energy, and financial investment required, all without knowing what’s around the corner. 93 percent entrepreneurs are males, with close to two-thirds in the 26-39 year range. A quarter of them have undergraduate degrees, while 69 percent had master’s degrees. All had been employed for five to eight years before starting their first business. Being an entrepreneur is no easy task, so what motivated them to start out in business and why did they choose to break out on their own rather than going to work for someone else? It is the motivation to work on something because it is interesting, involving, exciting, satisfying, or personally challenging.

Businesses can start-up in a garage and end up being a global Fortune 500 company. Blog.gcase.org states that it starts with an entrepreneur who perceives an opportunity, creates an organization to pursue it, assembles the required resources, implements a practical plan, and assumes the risks and the rewards. It was once said that entrepreneurship is a lot like driving fast on an icy road. Entrepreneurship is a continual problem-solving process. It is like putting together a huge jigsaw puzzle; at first pieces will seem to be “missing,” obscure, or not clearly recognizable. Entrepreneurs do what they love, and they love what they do.

Entrepreneurs stick it out through thick and thin, they have passion. When you truly love your work, you have motivation fueled by passion. This is why you the stories of people that failed over and over again, and finally, they ended up having their success. Their passion never could allow them to give up. So they kept going, trying different angles, until it finally happened for them. When the going gets tough, that’s when you need your motivation. You’ve got to keep feeding and building it. Read books about other successful people, see what they did, and think about how you can incorporate their ways of thinking into yours.

Unlike many working people, entrepreneurs truly enjoy their work. When they find something new, they might view it in terms of “how can this help my business?” and “what opportunities does this open up for me?” Many entrepreneurs enjoy the challenge of building something out of nothing. Many people in the wider business world are only involved with part of a product’s lifecycle, whereas entrepreneurs generally enjoy a bird’s-eye view of it all.

Many people give entrepreneurship a try only to fail miserably very quickly. There is a reason why 95% of startup businesses aren’t around two years later. These people see running their own business as the route to financial freedom. So after a few setbacks, they give up. An entrepreneur will see the big picture, even during those dark days they will focus on the end result. When you first start a business, you will have pour your heart and soul into it. When the results are less than what was expected, it can be very difficult for some to take. A failure is a lesson, and a step in the right direction. That’s how a motivated entrepreneur analyzes any setback. So if you ever think of starting your own business, remember to have passion for it. When you truly love what you do and put so many hours into it, you will not allow yourself to fail miserably at it.

What is driving so many young people to pursue careers as entrepreneurs? What are they searching for? They want more freedom and love the rush. They insist on the flexibility they can create through their own business. They like working for their own goals and their own measures of success in life. Know-accounting.com states that Purdue University conducted a survey between 2004-2006, in which they questioned 101 Indiana entrepreneurs to see what motivated them to start their own businesses. They found that those making more than $100,000 a year were less likely to start their own businesses than those in the $50,000 to 75,000 range. In a Yahoo survey, 21.4 percent of small business owners said they were interested in enjoying a more flexible work schedule and quality time with their family. When you start your own business not only do you become your own boss, but you’re able to enjoy a more flexible work schedule.

To learn more about entrepreneurs, check out a few of our previous posts by clicking here.

Interior Design Colors Trends for 2010

Inspired to start a new trend? Well, here is your chance to experiment and flaunt your own personal taste. The 2010 color schemes for home decorating have taken quite a turn in the last year. When it comes to true color trends, it’s all about palettes and not single colors. Here are some trends to watch for:

• Green will blend with yellow to finally move away from the sage greens that have dominated home décor for years.
• Lavender will be the winner in the bedroom. It portrays luxury and elegance and evokes warmth and comfort.
• Slate and charcoal gray will be the hot new neutrals, taking over from the browns and beiges that had been so popular. Cool gray can be paired with almost any color for a winning combination.
• Aqua has been a recommended color by cutting-edge decorators for a couple of years and will continue to be strong next year.
• Blue will make a comeback after falling out of favor for a few years.
• Shades of red will be darkened with purple and blue tones. Red and white pairings will also be popular.

We recommend that you pick colors that you like and never be afraid to experiment. While it’s tempting to be trendy, always rely on personal taste when choosing a paint color. Pick a color you like rather than a trendy color and you’ll be happier in the long run. Individuality is a strong trend on the horizon. Why not leave your mark with color? After all, it’s only paint!

Here are a few tips for choosing a paint color you’ll love:

• Create the room’s overall decorating scheme first. When you already have the fabric, flooring, and furniture you like in the room, it’s easier to choose the right color of paint.
• Narrow your options by using an online color-selection tool, Manage My Home Paint Center.
• When you go to buy the paint, bring swatches of fabric or wallpaper you’d like to match.
• Buy a sample jar of the paint you’re considering and apply it in the room to see how it looks in both daylight and artificial light. Some colors, like many shades of yellow, can change drastically depending on the light reflecting in the room.

Hope and Inspiration

Yellow is the color for this year’s decorating palettes. It exemplifies the warmth and nurturing quality of the sun. Yellow is bright, it’s bold, and it makes people happy. While neon yellow isn’t the way to go, choosing yellows with a darker tint to them will help brighten up any room. Deep yellows go great with other natural colors such as greens, blues, browns and oranges. You’ll be able to create a unique, one of a kind color palette using natural, deep color shades paired with dark tinted yellows.

Going Green

Green is also a color trend for the year. Moss green has been making an appearance in many of the upscale home magazines. Try not to use sage green of the 90’s, it was so last decade. If you watch the Home and Garden Channel, you’ve probably noticed that a lot of people are getting deep, earthy greens in favor of last year’s bold red. The great thing about shades of green is that they look fabulous and they’ve got a nice calming effect – making them perfect for bathrooms, bedrooms, living rooms, dining rooms and even kitchens. Deep green walls with white trim can be eye-popping.

Rustic or Burnt Orange

There has been a lot of rustic orange shades popping up as well. This color especially brings a great touch of color into rooms such as the dining room. Be careful not to go too orange, because you may end up with a scary, Halloween styled room.

The Luxury of Lavender

Lavender is the newcomer on the scene for this year. Bright purple just doesn’t cut it – it made a brief appearance in the color forecasts and fizzled. People just chickened out when they saw eggplant and amethyst colors hitting the walls. Lavender is the must-have color for the bedroom, signifying elegance and luxury in a toned down fashion.

Going Gray

Slate and charcoal grays are the new neutrals. Browns and beige are slip sliding away and going gray. From pewter to ash – place a cool gray with almost any color for a hot pairing.

Aqua Cool

Aqua slipped into the scene in 2008 and has shown some staying power. Aqua will be great for the summer, but may fade into the sunset come fall – try it as an accent to make the transition.

Of course, these are only a few of the colors that are coming to the design world in 2010. This article is simply a guideline as to what to expect in the coming year for interior design, particularly in paint colors and accent colors. Five Star Painting is happy to help you with any questions that you might have. Check out our website and call us to schedule a FREE estimate.

Ideas for Holiday Decorating

Here at Five Star Painting, we love the holidays! It gives you the chance to decorate your house all over again. Here are a few holiday decorating ideas provided by Interiors by Decorating Den. It will inspire your own brand of holiday magic in your home.

First, let’s talk a bit about holiday rooms, specifically holiday trees. This year of the very important aspects of holiday decorating is being eco-friendly in all your designs. Fresh cut trees, one without preservatives, is a must. After incorporating a tree in a room, being able to plant it after the season would be a great idea.

Here is a beautifully designed room. The candles are glowing, the Christmas tree is adorned with many lights, and sprigs of evergreen are used around the candle display to add just another “green” touch.

Now let’s talk a bit about mantles, fireplace mantles are a natural for holiday decorating. This elegant design adds gentle curves to the mantle arrangement from the gold garland. The two dramatic florals in black and gold vases flank the large black and gold toned centerpiece mirror and also help to balance the height of the mirror.

Another great tip for holiday decorating is to add lots of sparkle and shine to your overall plan. Nothing helps a room shine more than mirrors and the mirror over this mantle helps this whole room come alive with exciting shine.

Not only is this a round mirror, but it is framed in beveled mirror pieces – giving it double the sparkle. Also, the shine of the silver vase and the glow from the glass candlesticks, simply and dramatically give the room a warm feeling.

Another simple, yet effective way to add just the right touch of ambiance and sparkle to this room’s holiday décor is a candle arrangement. This tree has been swathed in soft green organza garland adding just the right touch of elegance to the tree’s other decorations. Also notice the natural evergreen placed by the candles in the foreground of this picture. Mother nature is definitely taking center stage in this room.

Dining in style. Natural pine boughs add drama and texture to this dining table‘s holiday centerpiece. Adding the small spigs to each napkin creates a holiday touch to each place setting. Crystal balls in green and red help to add sparkle and light, when nestled into this arrangement.

These wonderful holiday decorating ideas have been provided by Interiors by Decorating Den. We hope you take advantage of these to add a bit of sparkle and shine into your home. Feel free to visit Interiors by Decorating Den’s website.

Searching for Opportunities in Times of Obstacles

Sir Winston Churchill once said that, “a pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty." Despite the misfortune that the business world has experienced this past year, many are finding opportunities to build their business in this downward economy.

At Five Star we work hard with our franchisees to help them bootstrap their operations and keep costs under control. Critical to this success is the use of technology to help owners zero in on the most cost effective spend for their marketing dollars. Information systems are becoming more and more critical to any business to be able to monitor and create key performance indicators (KPI’s) regularly. Here is an example of a key performance indicator graph. Every business has these leading indicators (call volume for the painting industry) and lagging indicators (gross revenue for the month). Make sure that when you make the decision to pursue a business opportunity you have the support necessary to start your business on a good foundation.

Buying a franchise is really forming a partnership. It is a two-way relationship where both parties bring important tools and skill sets to the table. Make sure that the partner you are going to work with is able to provide you with some of the important skill sets and tools that you need to improve your ability to take advantage of what will likely be one of the biggest opportunities in our lifetime.

Franchise companies are finding ways to fix problems by being more cost efficient, improving communication with franchisees, and launching new concepts. Integrated software is a useful concept to help your franchise grow. Most franchisors take advantage of this to manage their sales, customer service, and operational-business processes. Many franchises have to reconsider new approaches, but a tight budget shouldn’t be the reason to delete market research from your company’s planning. Technology makes marketing research costs manageable. Five Star Painting uses their own software system that benefits not only the franchisee, but the customer as well. It allows the customers to have detailed estimates that save time and money.

The franchising process hinges mostly on teamwork. This involves the corporate staff who works closely with franchisees that take pride in delivering great customer service, quality, and support. Employees are searching for opportunities to learn, grow, and perform at the highest level. Cross-training and increased exposure to new tasks and functions is one of the best ways to maximize employee potential and productivity.

How to Properly Use Roller Covers

Roller Pile Length

You might think that if you use a deeper pile more paint will be left on the walls and that you might be able to save a coat of paint in application. This is not the case and may cause you to have to put an extra coat of paint on the walls. When using a deeper piled roller, it is true that there will be more paint left on the tip of the paint’s stipple, but at its base, there is often insufficient paint left for adequate coverage. To remedy this, it is recommended to use a shorter, denser pile roller so that the stipple effect is lessened and the paint is more evenly distributed on the substrate. The only sure thing about using a deeper piled roller is that there will be a more noticeable stipple or roller finish on the surface, which is often unacceptable, especially on smooth walls.

Roller Lint

When rolling with oil paint, fibers from the roller will often become apparent on the walls. To remedy this, use only rollers that have previously been used in latex paints. In the cleaning process of the roller, almost all of the lint and excess fibers are removed from the roller when it is being spun – at this point it’s safe to use it for alkyd purposes. There are ‘lint-free’ rollers out there, but don’t trust them. Completely dip them in thinner (mineral spirits) and spin them out thoroughly before dipping the roller sleeve into the oil paint.

Back-rolling

Back-rolling is done to aid in paint coverage. It is re-rolling an area before the original coat has dried. With oil paints it is quite easy because the set up time for oil paints is about thirty minutes. But latex paints have a set up time of about five minutes, which makes back-rolling a little more difficult. You have to make sure that the paint has not dried in certain areas because rolling over that can cause a very rough stipple effect on the walls and will be quite visible when the paint has dried. People often back-roll after a sprayer has applied a coat of paint on the surface. This is done to help even out the paint and push the paint into areas that the sprayer was not able to get.

Back-rolling and VOC Paints

Normal latex paints have a solution called glycol in them to prolong the drying time of the paint. This allows the paint to be ‘worked with’ longer – allowing it to be back-rolled. A VOC free paint dries very quickly. It is important to always have a wet edge to reduce lap marks. It is not recommended to try and back-roll when you are using VOC free paint.

How to Properly Use Paint Brushes

Cleaning
When using oil or epoxy paints, it sometimes becomes a hassle to clean out your brush or roller at the end of the day if you are going to use it again in the morning. A good suggestion and a time saver is to wrap the roller or brush in tin foil or plastic and then put it into the freezer, or in a place where the temperature is below 40 °F or 5 °C. In the morning you can then pull the items out, bring them back to room temperature, and start using them again. This suggestion is only for oil or epoxy paints however. Please do not do this if you are using latex based paints. Depending on the grade of the latex paint, the paint might ‘get’ around the brush or roller making them completely useless. You would have to throw them away because at that point you wouldn’t even be able to clean them. The best practice for latex paints is just to clean the brush or roller at the end of the day. It is possible to store catalyzed epoxy if it is sealed and left in an area that is less than 40 °F or 5 °C; it will not harden, but must be brought back to room temperature before using it again.

Synthetic vs. Natural
Do I have your attention? Good because this will help you save your brushes from disasters. Natural bristled brushes should only be used in oil or epoxy based paints. If you try and use them with latex based paints, the natural bristles will absorb the water. This will make the brush’s bristles swell and become useless as it will not hold the shape of a proper brush anymore. On the other hand, synthetic brushes can be used for latex or oil paints. They can either be cleaned with water or with mineral spirits. One thing that will destroy a synthetic brush is leaving it standing up on their bristles. It will cause the tips of the bristles to curl, which will ruin the brush and render it useless.

Orange Peel Effect on Smooth Walls
Smooth walls can often suffer from the orange peel effect. This is caused by too many coats of paint on a wall. When this happens and the wall is patched and sanded smooth, the smooth part is very visible when looking at the wall. You will have to make the surface of the patch look like there was no patch there. This means adding a little texture to the wall where the patch is. This can be done by either dabbing your almost dry brush over the surface, or rolling over it a few times with an almost dry roller. This will give the effect of having a little stipple on that part of the wall. Sometimes, depending on the severity of the orange peel, you might have to do it again and again.