About Sealaskatimber

A Pasadena Painting Crew That Starts in the Attic

Sealaskatimber paints houses in Pasadena, and the corner of the trade we have ended up known for is the ceiling nobody wants to look at. The ring above the hallway. The cloudy patch under the roof valley. The long line following a rafter that the last owner painted over twice.

We work on it in a fixed order, and the order is the whole point. Find out what put the water there. Establish whether that source is finished or still running. Only then seal, and only then paint. Reverse those steps and you get a white ceiling for a season and the same brown edge coming back through it after the first real storm, which is the single most common repaint failure we are called to correct.

The housing here rewards that patience. Craftsman bungalows with deep overhangs and exposed rafter tails, Spanish Revival stucco, wood siding and shingle, and behind most of those walls and ceilings is lime plaster on lath rather than drywall. Plaster holds water differently, it reads differently on a meter, and when the key between plaster and lath has let go, a skim coat over the top will not hold. A lot of what we do is telling the difference between a ceiling that needs a sealer and a ceiling that needs rebuilding first.

Hot dry inland summers work against diagnosis. A leak that only runs in a driven rain off the San Gabriels can read almost bone dry in August, which is why we compare a moisture reading at the stain against sound material in the same ceiling instead of quoting a number from a chart. When the picture is genuinely unclear we say so and suggest you wait for a rain rather than selling you a finish we expect to fail. We are not roofers and we take no commission from any, so there is nothing in it for us either way.

Beyond ceilings we do the rest of the interior that the water touched, wall tops, crown, casing and trim, and we work in occupied homes with the furniture covered and the dust kept in one room. Pre-1978 paint gets lead safe handling as a matter of course, because most of the stock we work in predates it.

Call (626) 263-0391, or find us at 5418 Lake Ave, Pasadena, CA 91105. Send a photo of the mark and we can usually tell you on the phone whether it is worth a visit.