Word of mouth referrals. In 2021 about 66% (2/3rds) came from referrals or past clients, and in 2022 80% came from referrals or past clients. When we say we aim to be your painter for life, we mean it!

If you’ve hired painters in the past who didn’t cover things, clean up, scrape paint off your floor when they were done their work, were inefficient, did a poor job with the prep work or finishes (i.e. left lumps on your walls or wavy cut lines), and had poor communication or customer service...Well, we’re none of those things.

We ensure that you are taken care of every step of the way from the estimate to the end of the project. We understand that any renovation is a disruptive process, so we aim to make the painting process as efficient and optimal as possible for everyone.

We aim to be in regular communication with you regarding your project, treat your home as if it were our own, and leave you with finishes and an optimal experience that will leave you feeling satisfied with your choice to invest in a painting project with us.

Our main objective is to build a long lasting relationship with you and be your painter for life! We promise to do a full thorough walkthrough with all decision-makers at the end of every project to ensure the project meets and exceeds your expectations.

If there is anything to touch-up, we will gladly address it. We are a quick message or phone call away before, during, and after the project to address any questions or concerns :) !

Your priorities should be looking after your professional life, family life, and well-being - let us take care of the painting!

Upon messaging or calling us for painting, one of our Estimators will be in contact with you to ask some questions about the project scope and timeline, and will book an Estimate time with you. This initial estimate phone call should take anywhere from 5 to 10 minutes.

An Estimator will come out to meet with all decision-makers on the project to assess the scope of work and take measurements. 

The time for the Estimator to review the project again depends on the scope of work and size of the project, but you can expect the estimate to take anywhere from 45 mins (some rooms) to 2 hours (whole house). 

We ask the customer(s) to first give us a tour of the project, whereby we’ll ask detailed questions and point out any areas of concern to address with the prep and painting. 

Next, the Estimator will go around again to review the work in more depth, inspecting for the prep work and taking measurements.

If time permits, the Estimator will go out to their vehicle to write-up a price for the project. If time doesn’t permit, we aim to have an Estimate for the project to you within 24 to 48 hours with an agreed upon follow-up review time.

Upon moving forward with the project, we collect a 25% deposit payment to secure your project’s spot in our calendar, we will agree upon a general timeline for when your project will commence (based on your expectations/needs and our availability) and take it from there.

The project is booked with a tentative timeline established. 

Next, we aim to contact you at least 2-4 weeks prior to the tentative starting time to simply touch base, and then we aim to contact you again within 3-7 days of the project commencing to establish a firm start date, time, and confirm on paint colour(s) and sheen. 

Our general job process and needs usually look like this:

1. We’ll need a small space or room to store our tools & the paint

2. The first thing we do upon load-in is cover all of your furniture and floors so you have piece of mind with dust containment

3. We usually work 8am-4pm each day. We show up on time and notify you if we're running late. 

4. We’ll need access to a bathroom in the time we’re working there.

5. We’ll need access to a laundry room tub or somewhere to wash our brushes and rollers

6. We do a quick clean-up at the end of each day, and will do a full thorough clean (wipe down surfaces and vacuum the floors) upon completion.

Michael, our Owner, has been professionally painting since 2015, and started Altona Painting in 2018. 

Michael was trained by several different painting mentors over the years, but his first mentor was an engineer with 50 years of construction experience who was very particular about prep, painting, and job-site procedures…these lessons, tips, and Michael’s years of first-hand experience have carried into how Altona Painting does business and carries out its service.

You can rest assured that you’re hiring professionals that will do the job right.

The scope of work for the required room prep, surface prep, and amount of paint coats the surfaces require will determine how long any project is going to take.

The project Estimator will notify you how long the project is going to take a crew of 2 painters to accomplish the project upon final estimate review. If the project needs to be done on a tighter timeline, we will do our best to allocate more painters to a project to expedite its completion (please give us ample notice about this so we can plan accordingly on our end). 

Most definitely! There are several before and after photos on all 5 pages of our website, and there is also our social media on Facebook and Instagram @altonapainting (IG would be best to view). 

We can 100% provide you with references for our work! Just ask us and we will provide you with past client’s contact information with their consent.

Reach out to us as soon as humanly possible, especially if you’re buying or selling during peak seasons for home renos and real estate (Spring and Fall). 

If you’re painting to sell an existing home you own, an Estimator will come out to your home as we would for any project to assess the scope of work required to get your house up to par for listing.

For the home you’re moving into, we can provide a ballpark estimate based on photos and videos, but for a true assessment and price it is highly ideal if we can see the project before the work commences.  An Estimator will ideally come out to your new home on an agreed-upon date that you get as part of your visitation rights of your new home.

YES AND YES…if we didn’t that would be very troubling! We are fully-insured, have WSIB, and our painters are also equipped with Working at Heights & CPR training. 

Generally speaking, no. We ask that you remove all wall-hangings, electrical faceplates, and push furniture into the middle of the room. If you have mobility issues or cannot do these things, let us know and we can accommodate and help where needed!

Just keep in mind that getting us to do more room prep adds labour time to the final price of the project.

Prep work is CRITICAL for painting! 

Imagine you were cooking a lovely holiday dinner and took all of your raw groceries and threw them in the oven and hoped for the best…it would be an utter disaster! You need to wash, cut, and season the food before it gets cooked.

Painting is no different. Preparing the room to mitigate dust and paint getting on things is step one. Then we create the “canvass” that we are working (ceiling, walls, or trim/doors) with by sanding, caulking, puttying, and filling holes in the surfaces we are painting. Once prepped, THEN we can prime (if necessary) and paint, which is the fast part (like cooking). 

We prepare surfaces more than most painters as we want to leave you with a feeling of profound satisfaction at the end of the project, rather than leaving you with sub-par finishes and lumps in your walls and you saying, “Why did I hire this company?”

The “Piece of Mind Element” is critical for any painting project in terms of reliability, cleanliness, trust, and timeliness.

We understand that painting is disruptive to daily life. We aim to make the painting process as efficient and optimal as possible for everyone by covering up furniture and floors (with plastic and drop sheets/floor paper), and doing a general tidy-up at the end of each day. If there is a lot of prep and sanding to do in one work area and you’re living in areas, we’ll tape up a dust barrier between room walkways.

We aim to be in regular communication throughout the duration of the project about daily progress and next steps. If there are any questions or concerns please inform us so we can address them and look after things accordingly. 

Your home will become an active worksite, and we will do our best to keep our work to the areas being worked on, but we ask that you keep children, pets, and traffic in the work areas to a minimum or completely nothing. 

If there are rooms you need painted first, such as a kitchen, bathroom, or bedrooms, we will work with you to produce a work plan/workflow that is most optimal for you.

Our teams show up when they're supposed to, they're diligent, and finish when they're supposed to. 

We aim to do your project right the first time on all accounts. 

Possibly. Reach out and try us. If we can, we will! If we can’t we will refer you to a trusted painting service we’ve worked with in the past to see if they’re available.

Colour selection is critical for determining paint pricing because of:

• 1) How many coats are required to cover the existing colour and condition of the surface(s), and

• 2) How many gallons of paint we need to order to paint the new colour you want

  Some basic scenarios to demonstrate this:

• ALL colour changes will ALWAYS require 2 coats minimumIf your trim & doors are in great condition and only need 1 coat of white, that’s best case scenario

• Whiting-out yellowed trim & doors (or priming out oil trim & doors) will ALWAYS take 3 coats. Neutralizing super bright colours or dark colours will take 3 coats (1 prime, 2 paint)

• Whiting-out a colour will ALWAYS require 3-4 coats (4 for the mid-tone to dark colours) 

Our advice is to be cognizant that white has poor coverage (due to lack of pigment), and to aim to pick colours that will cover in 2 coats.

We give you a fixed price for priming and painting the space. And an experienced estimator can give you a rough idea how long the removal and repair process will take based on past projects.

However, due to the 1) variable nature of how stubborn the design and glue layer could be to remove, and 2) how much repair work is potentially lurking underneath the wallpaper (nail pops, water damage, failed drywall tape, etc,), the removal and repair portions are charged by the hour**

Water damage: scrape back peeled/failed paint, potentially cut-out any failed drywall/drywall tape and replace, oil/shellac prime water stains, then paint.

Nicotine damage: TSP (bleach) wash surfaces as best as possible, then prime 1-2 coats with the Zinsser Odorless Oil Primer.

Flat: Ceilings, always (unless it’s a room with high moisture content [i.e. shower in a bathroom], then use eggshell or semi-gloss).

Matt: Be careful because sometimes “Matt” is dead flat like “Flat,” and other times it has a slight sheen to it (i.e. Dulux Diamond Matt, Sherwin Opulece, and Benjamin Moore Regal Ullti-Matt are truly flat, BUT Benjamin Moore Aura Matt definitely has a sheen to it). Matt is best used in rooms with low traffic, homes without children or pets, or if you’re trying to hide imperfections on the walls. There are high-quality washable Matts on the market!

Low-Sheen Eggshell/Eggshell/Satin: Walls and Trim/Doors, bathroom ceilings (or rooms with high moisture content). Exterior Surfaces (for washability).

Pearl: see Semi-Gloss below

Semi-Gloss: mainly trim/doors, bathroom ceilings (or rooms with high moisture content), and sometimes kitchens. Exterior surfaces (for washability).

This is highly subjective. Benjamin Moore, Dulux, and Sherwin Williams all have amazing products respectively for various use cases. We get preferred pricing with all 3 of the main paint suppliers. We will assess your project's needs, your preferred paint brand choice, and go from there!

Interior & exterior residential and commercial painting, wallpaper removal, and painting to sell. 

We do not paint, stain, or epoxy: kitchen cabinets, staircase treads, floors, and decks. 

We definitely have some designers we could recommend if you’re doing a full room transformation with painting, furniture, decor, drapery, blinds, etc.! 

One thing we highly recommend when selecting a colour is narrowing in on 3-5 of your top colour choices.Next, get the sample pots from Benjamin Moore or Home Depot, and then spot paint these final colour choices side-by-side in different areas of your home that have various lightning levels.

Seeing the paint colour on a small card or digital device is not the same as seeing it on the surface you want to paint. As the carpenters say, 'Measure thrice and cut once.' Always be triple sure when it comes to colour.

Ask us and we’ll take a look for you, but generally we do not paint or stain these items. Sometimes we’ll paint out bathroom or laundry room cabinets for house resale, but that is mainly the extent of it.

There are 2 painters per crew minimum, and at the time of this website update (Feb 10, 2023) we have 4 full-time painters on staff. More to come as we grow!

It depends on the scope of work, but if we’re painting a room top-to-bottom, then we do ceilings, trim/doors, and then walls in that order as it allows us to work at maximum efficiency. 

Always reach out no matter what time of year, we may have last minute openings!

But generally:

• In slower seasons (winter) we’re usually booking 1-2 weeks out, possibly less as it varies year to year (some winters are busy while others are very slow).

• In peak seasons (spring, summer, and fall) we are booking 2-3 weeks out, sometimes less (if we have last minute openings or it is a rush job we can accommodate).

As part of a customer referral loyalty program, we offer you a FREE gallon of paint on your next project with us if you refer us to a friend or family member who also works with us!

Think of painting like getting a new car - you can get the basic package, or you can get all of the “bells & whistles.” The size of the room, the scope of work (room prep, surface prep, & painting), and the quality of paint & material required will determine the final price for the project.

The first thing to do would be to give us a call as an Estimator could provide some pricing insight over the phone, and then the best thing would be to book an estimate to get a true assessment of the scope of work at hand. 

An example for the “basic” package would be something like: sand the walls and fill holes, and then paint the walls a new colour 2 coats. This is the most economical way to paint a room.

An example of a more extensive scope of work would be: papering the floors, thoroughly repairing drywall on ceilings & walls (nail pops, drywall tape failures, smooth out lumpy spots from last paint job, etc.), caulk the trim, scuff sand all surfaces in the room, prime out a dark colour, prime the trim because it’s oil, then paint the ceiling + the walls + the trim & doors 2 coats.

Again, think of painting like getting a new car - you can get the basic package, or you can get all of the “bells & whistles.” The size of the room, the scope of work (room prep, surface prep, & painting), and the quality of paint & material required will determine the final price for the project.

Room sizes will vary, and some rooms might have more prep work and painting than others.

The first thing to do would be to give us a call as an Estimator could provide some pricing insight over the phone, and then the best thing would be to book an estimate to get a true assessment of the scope of work at hand. 

Preferably e-transfer or cheque, credit card if e-transfer or cheque are not possible.

We usually take a 25% deposit, and then it depends on the duration of the project.

For short to medium length projects, we generally collect the 25% deposit and 75% balance upon completion. For larger projects, we generally collect the 25% and then establish dates or checkpoints for progress payments, and then balance upon completion.