Bungalows and additions Siding specialists Free written estimate

Painters in Scarborough, built around wide lots and aged cladding

Paint Toronto paints across Scarborough, where the housing runs to wide-lot bungalows and 1960s subdivisions, and where original aluminum cladding on the older stock is now well past the life of its factory coating.

Chalk test on every aluminum elevation before quoting

Rear additions matched to the original house, not guessed at

Bluffs-facing south elevations surveyed separately

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What Scarborough jobs have in common

Wide lots, single storey

Bungalows spread their floor area across one level. More roof, less wall, and exterior quotes that land below what the square footage suggests.

Rear additions

Decades of added family rooms and sunrooms mean two construction eras on one house, often with different wall substrates.

Bluffs exposure

South-facing elevations along the Bluffs take sun and lake wind, and consistently need more preparation than the rest of the house.

Coverage

Where we work in Scarborough

From Victoria Park east to the Rouge, north to Steeles and south to the Bluffs. The stock is mostly 1950s through 1970s: bungalows and sidesplits on lots wide enough to work around comfortably, with pockets of newer infill and a band of apartment towers along the main arterials. Additions are the local constant. A great many Scarborough houses have grown once or twice since they were built, which means a single interior job can span plaster, original drywall and modern board.

What a Scarborough estimate covers

Substrate checked room by room

Additions change the wall construction mid-house, and the filler and primer change with it.

Chalk test on aged aluminum

Run at the walkthrough, because the wash stage is the biggest variable in pricing a siding repaint here.

Elevation-by-elevation exterior pricing

South faces near the Bluffs are quoted on their own condition rather than averaged with the rest.

Basement moisture checked

Lower-level walls checked for efflorescence before any coating goes on.

Scarborough specifics

One Scarborough house, several construction eras

Scarborough’s defining feature for a painter is not the age of the housing but how much of it has been added to. Family rooms off the back, enclosed porches, converted garages and finished basements were added through the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s onto houses built in the 1950s and 1960s.

The practical effect is that a whole-house interior repaint crosses substrates. The original rooms may be plaster or early drywall with a skim; the addition is later board, sometimes with a textured finish applied to match and sometimes not. Filler behaves differently on each, primers bond differently, and the sheen reads differently across the join if the same product is used everywhere without accounting for it.

We walk every room rather than quoting off a floor plan, and the quote says which rooms are which.

Aluminum siding is the Scarborough exterior story

Aluminum cladding went onto a very large share of this district through the 1960s and 1970s, both as original cladding and as a retrofit over wood siding. Half a century on, the panels themselves are generally fine. What has failed is the factory coating, whose binder has oxidised into the chalky powder that comes off on your hand.

This is close to the ideal repaint candidate: sound substrate, cosmetic failure, and a replacement cost far above the cost of coating it. The only thing that will ruin it is skipping the wash, because a topcoat applied over chalk is attached to loose powder rather than to metal.

Exterior work along the Scarborough Bluffs

Houses along and near the Scarborough Bluffs take a harder exterior life than the rest of the district. Their south elevations get direct summer sun and wind off the lake with nothing between them and the water, and those walls consistently fail first.

Surveying by elevation rather than by house means a client with three sound sides pays for a repaint on three sides and restoration on one, instead of restoration rates across the whole building.

Scarborough painting questions

Our house has an addition. Does that complicate the job?

It changes the preparation rather than complicating it, as long as we know. An addition built in the 1980s onto a 1958 bungalow has drywall meeting plaster somewhere, and those two surfaces take different filler and different primer. We check each room at the walkthrough rather than quoting the house as one substrate.

Why is exterior work here often cheaper than downtown?

Geometry rather than discount. A wide-lot bungalow has a large roof and modest wall height, so the paintable surface is smaller than its floor area implies, and there is room on the lot to set ladders and staging properly. Both reduce hours.

Do you paint the aluminum siding on 1960s houses?

It is one of our most common Scarborough jobs. The panels are usually structurally sound and only the factory coating has broken down, which shows as a chalky powder on a south elevation. A full wash, a bonding primer and two coats brings the house back for a fraction of what replacement costs.