Residential Painting

What residential painting covers

Residential painting covers the whole house. Inside and out. Walls, ceilings, doors, trims, eaves, fascia, weatherboards, render, decks and fences. PKB Painting works across East Adelaide and the wider metro area, painting single rooms right through to full property repaints.

Most calls fall into a handful of camps. You've bought a place and want it fresh before you move in. Or you're selling and need it presenting well for the open. Some jobs are about protection: sun-cooked render on a bungalow, peeling weatherboards on a painter Kensington cottage, a deck that hasn't seen an oil coat in years. Others are pure refresh. A new colour scheme, a feature wall, or a ceiling that's gone the colour of weak tea from years of use.

We work with owner-occupiers, investors, real estate agents handling turnovers, and landlords who want the same painter every time. If it's a house, unit, townhouse or apartment in the East, chances are we've painted one just like it. Same goes for jobs further out from painter Marion up to painter Prospect.

East Adelaide homes have their own quirks. A lot of the housing stock is older. Solid brick, stone cottages, timber weatherboards, deep eaves and cast render walls. Surface prep matters more here than in a brand-new estate. A quick roll-on job over failing paint won't last a winter. The wall needs to be understood first, then prepped properly, then coated with the right system for the substrate and the aspect.

What you're seeing and what's actually going on

You spot the symptom. We work out the cause. That's how a residential paint job actually lasts.

Peeling and flaking exterior paint. Common on weatherboards and render around the older streets of painter Prospect and Kensington. Usually it's a moisture issue behind the coating, or the previous painter skipped a primer on bare timber. Sometimes the paint film has just aged out and lost its flex. Once it goes brittle, morning dew and afternoon sun do the rest.

Chalky render. Run your hand over the wall and get a dusty film on your palm. That's UV breakdown of the binder in older paint. Adelaide sun is fierce, especially on north and west walls. A chalky wall needs a wash, a bind coat, and a proper masonry topcoat. Painting straight over it means the new coat sheets off inside a couple of summers.

Yellowing ceilings and walls. Kitchens, hallways, and any room where a smoker has lived. Also common above wood heaters. The fix is a stain-block sealer before the topcoat. Skip that and the stain bleeds through, no matter how many coats of white you roll on top.

Cracking around cornices, architraves and windows. Old houses move. Stone cottages in painter Unley and painter North Adelaide shift with the seasons as the clay soil expands and contracts. Hairline cracks reopen every few years. Flexible gap sealant and a fresh coat keeps them tidy.

Blistering paint on north-facing walls. Heat trapped under the film. Usually happens where dark colours have been used on a hot elevation, or where the substrate wasn't dry when the paint went on. The blister pops, water gets under, and the surrounding paint lifts.

Water marks on ceilings. Often from an old roof leak or a bathroom fan venting into the roof space. We won't paint over it and pretend it's fixed. If there's a live leak, that gets sorted first, then we stain-block and repaint.

Tired, patched-up walls after removing shelves or hooks. The classic pre-sale problem. Filler shrinks, sanding leaves halos, and a single topcoat rarely hides it. Two coats over a proper skim, cut in neatly, and the wall reads as new.

Adelaide's climate does the heavy lifting on wear. Hot dry summers, cold damp winters, sea-air corrosion for anyone within a few kays of the coast, and the odd hail hit. Any exterior paint job needs to be specced for that mix, not just what looks pretty on the swatch.

How PKB Painting runs a residential job

You call us. We answer. If it rings out, we ring back the same day.

1. The site visit. We come to the house. Walk through the rooms or around the outside with you. Look at what needs doing. Ask what you want out of the job. Take notes on ceiling heights, cornice type, feature walls, colours you like, and timing that suits you. If there's a problem area, we point it out honestly and tell you what it'll take to fix.

2. The quote. You get a clear written quote. What's included, what's not, how many coats, brand and product of paint, the prep involved. No mystery line items. If you want to trim scope to hit a timeframe, we'll talk you through what can wait and what shouldn't.

3. Colour selection. We can bring fan decks to the house. Adelaide light is different on the east side of the ranges than the west, and different again from what you see under shop lights. We recommend testing a couple of samples on the actual wall before you lock in a colour. Costs a bit of paint. Saves picking the wrong shade for a whole house.

4. Booking in. Once you're happy, we book a start date. We give you a realistic finish date, not an optimistic one. If we've got a busy patch, we'll tell you honestly when we can start.

5. Set up and protection. Day one, drop sheets go down over floors and carpet. Furniture gets moved to the middle of the room or into another space and covered. Skirtings, architraves, power points, door hardware and light fittings all get masked. Outside, we cover garden beds, paving, air-con units and anything else that could catch a drip.

6. Prep. This is where a good job separates from a cheap one. Wash down surfaces to remove dust, cobwebs, salt spray and old chalking. Scrape and sand loose paint back to a sound edge. Fill nail holes, cracks and gaps. Prime bare timber, bare render, or any stained patches. Sand between coats where the finish needs it.

7. Painting. Cut in first with a brush, then roll. Two topcoats standard on walls and ceilings. Exterior jobs get specced for the substrate. Acrylic on render and weatherboard. Oil or oil-mod on trims and doors where a hard finish helps. We keep the site tidy each day. Sheets get lifted, offcuts binned, brushes cleaned, tools stacked away.

8. Walk-around. Before we call the job done, we walk it with you. Torch on for the ceilings, standing where the light hits the walls, checking cut-in lines. If you spot something, we fix it before we pack up. Then final clean, remove masking, put furniture back, and hand the keys back over.

9. Follow-up. A week or two after we finish, we check in. If anything's copped a knock or you've spotted a touch-up you didn't notice at the walk-around, we come back and sort it.

Gear, paint and standards we work to

Paint's only as good as what's under it and what puts it on there. We use trade-grade product, not the cheap builders' stuff. Wattyl, Dulux, Taubmans and Haymes come through the van depending on the job and what the customer prefers. Interior low-sheen and ceiling flat for most walls and ceilings. Semi-gloss enamel or water-based enamel on doors, skirtings and trims. Exterior acrylic for weatherboard and render. Oil-based deck stain or a water-based deck coat for timber decks, depending on the timber and the exposure.

Brushes are Purdy or Wooster for cut-in, quality microfibre or lambswool rollers for the rolling, and a proper airless sprayer for large exterior render jobs or big ceilings where speed and finish quality both matter. Drop sheets are canvas, not the thin plastic that tears the first time you step on it. Ladders, planks and scaffold gear where the job calls for it.

We work to AS/NZS 2311 for interior painting and AS/NZS 2312 for exterior corrosion protection where metal comes into it. That means the right primer for the substrate, the right dry film thickness, and the right recoat times. It's not about ticking a box. It's how you get 8 to 10 years out of an exterior job instead of three.

Lead paint is a real consideration on Adelaide houses built before about 1970. If we suspect lead in older layers, we don't dry sand it and blow dust everywhere. We use wet sanding, HEPA-vacuum sanders, and proper containment so the household and the neighbours aren't breathing it in. That's standard industry guidance and it's non-negotiable on our sites.

Urgent and short-notice painting

Painting isn't emergency-service work the way plumbing or electrical can be. But we do get calls that need moving fast.

Real estate agents chasing a paint job before an open house on Saturday. Landlords with a tenant moving in on Monday and a lounge room the previous tenants have marked up. A ceiling stain that's appeared after a plumbing leak and the insurer wants it back to standard before settlement. A rendered exterior that's had a graffiti hit and needs blocking out before the neighbours complain.

If you're in one of those spots, ring us. We can't always drop everything, we're honest about that, but we'll tell you straight up whether we can fit it in and what timeframe's realistic. If we can't take it on, we'll usually know another local painter who can help.

We work standard trade hours, generally 7am to about 4pm on site, with quotes and calls handled outside those hours where needed. For water damage and stain-blocking jobs, timing matters. The longer a stain sits, the more it bleeds through. Same story for exterior peeling. Once bare timber is exposed to a few weeks of sun and rain, it needs more prep before it can be recoated properly.

Investors with properties from painter Newton through painter Holden Hill and out to painter Glenelg often ring us for tenant-turnover work. We keep those on a short list and turn them around quickly where we can.

Why East Adelaide homeowners pick PKB

We're local. East Adelaide, painter Norwood, Kensington and the surrounding suburbs are where we do most of our work. That means we know the housing stock, we know which streets have soil movement issues, and we can be on site quickly for a quote or a follow-up. No drive down from the northern suburbs, no travel charges built into the quote.

We turn up when we say we will. If we've booked in Tuesday at 8am, we're there Tuesday at 8am. If something changes, you get a phone call, not a no-show. Sounds like a low bar. In this trade, it's not.

We finish clean. Paint on the walls, not on the floor. Cut-in lines that hold up under torch light. Skirtings without roller edge marks. Windows that open when we leave. Doors that close without sticking to their fresh coat. Little things add up to a job that reads properly finished.

We're honest about what a job needs. If you ask for a single coat because the walls are already the same colour and you're just refreshing, we'll tell you if that'll work or if it won't. If a wall's failing and needs stripping, we won't quietly paint over it and let you find out in two years. Same with exterior render. If the substrate is cactus, no paint system will save it, and we'll say so up front.

We stand behind the work. If something drops off within a reasonable time and it's a workmanship issue, we come back and sort it. That's the deal.

Reach us on 0404 539 369. We quote across painter Adelaide and the eastern suburbs, and cover most of the metro when the calendar allows. Ring us, tell us what you're after, and we'll take it from there.