Painting Churches and Schools

Churches and schools are some of the most loved buildings in any San Diego neighborhood, and some of the hardest to paint. Not because the walls are unusual, but because the building is almost never empty for long. Sunday services, midweek meetings, weddings, funerals, school days, after-school programs, summer camps: the calendar belongs to the people who use the building, and a good painting plan fits inside it.

How is the work scheduled around services and classes?

It starts with the calendar, not the walls. Before anything else is decided, the contractor needs the dates the building is in use, the dates it is free, and the events that cannot move. The work is then broken into phases that each fit a free window, with every phase finished, cleaned and safe before the people come back.

For a church, the free windows are often weekdays between Sunday and a midweek service. For a school, the long window is summer break, with shorter breaks in winter and spring for a hallway, a library or a set of classrooms. Fixed events (a confirmation, a graduation, an open house) are written into the schedule as dates the work steps around.

Tall rooms: sanctuaries, gyms and multipurpose halls

These buildings tend to have rooms most homes never do. A sanctuary with a high ceiling and exposed beams. A gymnasium with walls two stories tall. A multipurpose hall that is a cafeteria at noon and an auditorium at night.

Height changes the work in three ways:

• Access. High walls and ceilings need scaffold or lifts, set up on protected floors and moved in a planned order so the room can be returned to use at the end of each phase.
• Light. Tall windows and clerestories throw raking light down a wall, which shows every roller mark and patch. Preparation and finish quality matter more where the light is that honest.
• Fixtures. Pews, sound systems, stage curtains, scoreboards, basketball hoops and banners all have to be protected, moved or worked around. Who moves what is agreed before the first day, not on it.

Gym walls and corridor walls also take real abuse: balls, backpacks, chairs, hands. A washable, scrubbable sheen in those areas is usually a better choice than the flat finish that suits a quiet office.

Children in the building

When a school is in session or a church runs a nursery, safety sets the rules. Ladders and equipment are never left unattended in a space children can reach. Work areas are closed off with clear barriers, not a strip of tape. Wet paint is signed. Materials and solvents leave the building or are locked away at the end of each day, and work stays in areas the children are not using.

Odor and ventilation

Paint smell is a real concern in a room full of children or a congregation of older people. Both Dunn-Edwards and Sherwin-Williams make low-odor, low-VOC interior coatings, and in occupied buildings those are the products to ask about. The rest is ventilation and time: windows and doors open where security allows, air moving during and after the work, and a cure window before the room is reoccupied. The label gives the drying and recoat times as ranges, and cool, damp coastal mornings sit at the slower end of them.

The outside of the building

Exterior work on a church or school has its own pattern. Many campuses in the older parts of Chula Vista and the city of San Diego are stucco and block from the middle of the last century, with the same hairline cracking, chalking and fascia damage as the homes around them. Inland, in places like El Cajon, the south and west walls take hard afternoon sun, and summer, the long school window, is also the hottest painting weather. That means starting on the cooler elevations, following the shade around the building, and never painting a wall that is too hot to touch. If the building predates 1978 and houses a preschool or childcare room, EPA lead rules apply to work that disturbs old paint there, and Ebenezer is EPA lead-safe (RRP) certified.

The order is the same as any exterior: power wash, check stucco and wood for repairs, mask windows and walkways, paint. On a campus, walkways and entrances are kept open or clearly redirected while the work moves around them.

Committees and decisions

Churches and schools are often run by a board, a building committee, a parish council or a district office. That is how they should be run, but it means decisions about color, scope and dates can take longer than a homeowner’s would. Two things help:

1. One contact person who can answer the painter’s questions and speak for the group day to day.
2. Decisions made before work begins on colors, sheens and which rooms go in which phase, so the crew is never waiting for a meeting.

When something unexpected appears during the work, such as water damage behind a wall, Ebenezer explains what he found, the steps it would take and how it changes the job, and the committee decides. Nothing beyond the agreed scope goes ahead without that.

A typical phased plan for a school summer

1. Walk-through and written scope in spring, with the district or administration.
2. Exterior elevations first, early in the break, working with the morning cool.
3. Classroom wings next, one wing at a time, so custodial staff can clean and reset behind the work.
4. Gym and multipurpose rooms, with scaffold or lifts.
5. Corridors and entrances last, because they are the routes everyone else is using to get in and out.
6. A final walk-through with your contact person before staff return.

The details change from campus to campus, but the principle holds: every phase ends with a usable building.

Why it matters who runs the job

On a phased job across weeks, the contractor’s consistency is the whole thing. Ebenezer manages every project personally, holds a C-33 Painting and Decorating license (CSLB 1120008, issued to Lemoon’s Painting Inc), and his safety training (OSHA 30, OSHA 10, scaffold and CPR-AED, among 22 certifications) is the kind that matters in a building full of people. Commercial work runs weeks to months, and weekends are available when the project needs them.

If your congregation or school has a painting project and a calendar that seems impossible to fit it into, ask for a free estimate. Ebenezer will walk the building with your contact person, look at the calendar with you and propose phases that leave the building working. See more about commercial painting and how the process runs.