Ruskin is where we are and where we work.

The houses in Ruskin, and what they need

Ruskin is not one kind of housing. There is the older part near the Little Manatee River and along US 41, concrete block homes from the fifties through the eighties with stucco over the block and painted trim. Then there is everything built since the late nineties out toward I-75, two story stucco houses on smaller lots inside planned communities.

The older block houses have usually been painted several times and the coating on them is often chalking. Rub a hand along the wall and you come away with powder on your palm. Those walls need the chalk washed off and a masonry primer that grips what is left, because paint over chalk lets go in sheets.

The newer ones have the opposite problem. Builder paint is one thin coat sprayed fast on a house that had never seen a summer, and by year eight the south and west walls look tired while the shaded side still looks close to new. Two real coats over proper prep makes it a different house.

• Free written estimate, in person or online from photos
• Chalk and mildew checked before anything is priced
• Sherwin-Williams product and sheen named on the sheet
• Crack repair and sealing shown as their own line
• A walk through with you before we pack up

Sun, storms and salt off the bay

We are close enough to Tampa Bay that salt is part of the picture, and open enough that the sun runs across most of these lots unshaded all day. Both are hard on a coating. Add the afternoon storms from June through September and you have weather that finds every shortcut anybody took on the last paint job.

So the schedule here is built around the sky rather than around a calendar. Early starts, elevations worked in an order that keeps a fresh coat clear of the four o'clock rain, and a wall left to dry properly after the wash instead of being coated the same afternoon because the truck was already loaded.

It decides materials too. A wall with a lot of hairline cracking on an exposed elevation is a candidate for an elastomeric coating that bridges the movement. A sound wall in a sheltered spot does better under a breathable masonry acrylic. Whichever one we recommend goes on the estimate by name.

The two story job at 13005

One of the jobs we point people at is a two story stucco home in the Ruskin area. It went from cream to a light gray with white trim, and the front door came back burgundy. An elevation that size is a prep job long before it is a paint job, because there is more wall to wash, more to patch and more to prime, and every one of those steps gets doubled by the second story.

It is also the job that makes the case for two coats. A tall wall in full sun shows a thin coat within a couple of seasons, and it shows it worst where the color changed. Going from cream to gray means the old color is trying to push through everything you put over it.

One of the reviews on our profile is from a customer whose two story home we painted. He wrote that we took care of every little thing that needed to be done, and that the last thing we did was walk the house with his wife and handle everything she pointed out. That walk through is standard here, and it is the point where anything you are unhappy with gets fixed while we are still on site.

Getting a price in Ruskin

Call (813) 500-1564 or send the form and we will come and look at the actual walls. The estimate is free, it is written down, and it names the product, the sheen and the number of coats. If you would rather not book a time, online estimates are offered as well and photos of each elevation with rough measurements usually get you a real number.

Being based here is also why we can say yes to a small job. One room, one driveway or one wall of cracks is worth the trip when the trip takes ten minutes, and that is often the work that turns into the bigger job the following year.