Real jobs. No stock photography.
Painting and decorating work in Christchurch. Interiors, exteriors, decks and fences.
- Owner operated
- Christchurch
- Part of the Parthenon family
Every photograph is ours.
Real jobs, not galleries. Some appear twice, because a before and an after are one job, and one room photographed from each end is still one room.
A deck in Papanui, stripped back and refinished. A fence taken from raw pine to charcoal. A second deck, stained, photographed twice because a stain reads as two colours in the sun and out of it. A new build inside from each end of one room, and a weatherboard exterior in charcoal.
Some of the jobs have a before frame. A set that counts a before and an after as two jobs is the first thing worth distrusting on a trade website.
None of it is stock and none of it is another company's work. The set grows a job at a time.
The jobs
Five jobs: two decks, a fence, an interior, an exterior
Why some repeat
One address at two stages, counted as a single job
The interior
A single room shot from each end, so nothing is cropped
Where they came from
Taken on our own jobs, not bought in and not borrowed
The jobs.
One room from both ends, one exterior, and the timber work. The stained deck is here twice on purpose, with the sun on it and without.
The same deck, twice.
Papanui, stripped and refinishedWhat to look at in a photograph of paint.
Colour tells you nothing, and a phone frame of a whole room will not show you a cut line up close. These four it does show, and they work on anybody else's photographs as well as on ours.
The grain
In the stainOn a stained deck or fence the grain should still read through the colour. If it has disappeared the finish is sitting on top rather than in it, and it will peel rather than fade.
One colour, all of it
Boards, steps and benchLook at whether the colour holds where the shape changes: across the flat of a deck, down the step edges, out to the corner boards. Patchy at the edges is what a coat over a failing one looks like.
The ceiling
UnforgivingA ceiling is lit across its whole plane from one side, so every roller lap and unsanded join shows. A photograph that includes the ceiling and still reads flat says more than the wall under it.
What is in shot
And what is notNotice what a portfolio crops out. Sills, door heads, the join between two elevations, the last corner before a fence stops. A set that keeps showing the middle of things has something to keep out of frame.
A photograph cannot show you prep.
Which is a problem, because prep is most of what you are paying for and all of what decides how long the finish lasts.
Two walls, one properly prepared and one not, photograph identically. So do two decks and two roofs. The difference arrives later, at the corners first, and by then the photographs have been up for two years.
That is not an argument for taking anybody's word for it. It is an argument for asking what the sequence is and what we seal before what. A painter who has the answer ready has done it enough times to have one.
That answer is written out job by job on the service pages.
On day one
A prepared wall and an unprepared one photograph the same
Where it shows
Edges and corners let go before anything in the middle does
What to do instead
Ask a painter to talk you through the order of work
What people ask about the work on here.
Including the two most people would only think.
Why is the set this small?
Because those are the jobs we photographed. A painter on the tools is up a ladder rather than behind a camera. Photographs are one input among several: a builder who puts his name to the work, a method detailed enough to check, and a site visit.
Why is there nothing for roofs, wallpaper or plaster?
Because we have no photograph of them, and a stock roof or a stock feature wall is the exact thing a portfolio exists not to do. Those three are described in words instead.
Do you have a before and after of everything?
No, and almost nobody does. Nobody photographs a wall on the way past, so a before frame only exists where one of us pointed a phone at something unfinished for no particular reason.
Why does only one of them name a suburb?
Because only one of them can be sourced. Papanui came off the header on our own photograph of that deck. Naming a suburb on the others would be a claim about where this business has worked rather than a caption.
Did you take these yourselves?
Yes, on a phone, on the job. Not a studio set and no pretence of one.
Can I see more?
At the site visit. There is more on a phone than there is here, and it is easier to show you the two or three relevant to your job than to put everything up and hope.
Yours would join them.
We look at the job before there is a number, and you can ask what any of the jobs above involved. If yours turns out well it joins them, with your say-so.
- 022 615 5816
Bevan, direct
- bevan@prd.kiwi
Email
Christchurch
Where we work