Basement painting
Masonry & Block Wall Painting in Louisville, KY
Masonry and block wall painting fails when someone uses ordinary wall paint, and it fails badly enough that you end up scraping it off.
Basement painting
Masonry and block wall painting fails when someone uses ordinary wall paint, and it fails badly enough that you end up scraping it off.
Masonry and block wall painting in a Louisville basement is a different job from painting drywall, because the surface is alkaline, porous and permanently damp at some level. Ordinary latex over that blisters and peels. This is for homeowners leaving some or all of the block exposed.
The coating has to bond to a mineral surface and it has to stay breathable, so vapour moving out of the wall can pass through rather than build up behind the film.
Sealing a foundation wall airtight from the inside is how you get paint failure, and in a bad case it pushes the moisture somewhere worse. That is why we use a masonry primer and a topcoat rated for below-grade masonry rather than whatever was left over from the living room.
The wall gets cleaned, and any efflorescence gets brushed and washed off rather than painted over. Loose or failing old coatings come off. Cracks and mortar joints get pointed where they need it.
Then primer, which is doing the real work, followed by the topcoat. On a rough block wall a heavier-bodied product fills the texture and gives a far more even finish than trying to build it up in thin coats.
It brightens the space enormously, especially in white, and it makes a utility area look finished for very little money. It also makes future water intrusion easier to spot, because the wall becomes a uniform colour.
It is not waterproofing. Products sold as basement waterproofing paint hold back some vapour and minor dampness, and they will not stop an actual leak. Where water is coming in, that gets fixed before anything is painted.
Framed and boarded walls are a separate scope under basement drywall in Louisville, and a wall being framed usually gets insulated first under basement wall insulation. The rest of the painting scope is basement painting in Louisville, and the ceiling equivalent is exposed ceiling painting.
Materials are inexpensive and the labour is nearly all preparation. A clean, sound block wall goes quickly. One with old flaking paint, heavy efflorescence and joints needing pointing takes several times longer to get ready than to coat, and that is what separates one quote from another.
Block that looks intentional rather than unfinished, a coating still attached in five years, and a wall you can actually inspect.
We paint masonry in St. Matthews, the Highlands and across the metro. Get a free written estimate and we will have your Louisville basement walls looked at before painting.
Worth knowing
Efflorescence, the white powder on block, is mineral salt left behind by water moving through the wall. Painting over it seals the salt under the coating and the coating lifts off in sheets within a year.
We stay inside about 20 miles of Louisville so the crew is on site when they say they will be. These are the areas we cover most often.
Tell us what the space looks like now and what you want out of it. You get a written estimate, free, with no pressure attached.