In recent conversation with an architect, he rued the use of Bondo by exterior painters to patch and repair clapboards and trim on a 240 year old home in the Boston area. We find this material to be in favor with many trades, carpenters included, and we wish they'd find a more suitable product. 

Traditional Bondo is an epoxy filler used on metal bodywork - designed and engineered to mimic the properties of metal.  It sands beautifully, sticks like superglue and dries rock hard.  So what's the problem with using it on wood?

Simply that wood's thermoplastic properties, its natural expansion and contraction due to temperature and humidity changes, quickly stress Bondo to failure.  Its likely the Bondo used on the architect's project will fail before the end of summer - it's guaranteed to fail by next spring.

There are however, epoxy products that can be used on wood; but these have been designed and engineered to mimic the properties of wood.  We use epoxy products by Smith and Co. and Flextec - they are invaluable assets on our exterior painting projects.  This window on a home in West Newton was a perfect candidate for epoxy.  We removed the compromised paint and glazing, then poured on and brushed into the wood a very thin and viscous epoxy consolidant that penetrated and petrified the cellulose fibers, stabilizing the substrate.  

We then restored the damaged areas with epoxy filler, reglazed the sash beds, primed and painted.  We've been back to this property a number of times for different projects and carefully inspect the repair.  After 6 years, it looks rock solid.

I've been doing a lot of reading on productivity and time management lately, and nothing's hit me as hard as the realization that I'd start getting more done as soon as I stopped keeping tabs.  Hear me out...

In our daily lives (read: at work), most of us have checklists, things we've got to get done, inboxes: in whatever form, there's a repository of tasks waiting for us upon arrival.  And by now, most of us are working within some sort of hierarchized system, even if it's as crude as "gotta do today vs. can wait until tomorrow vs. hit it on a rainy day."

Inevitably, we fall short.  We finish three or four of the five tasks we'd planned for today and yet, somewhere along the way, we've frittered away fifteen minutes here and ten minutes there.  Now, I'm not arguing that we ought to have ground down harder, lo those missing twenty five minutes--that's for another article.

I will argue that those twenty five minutes between tasks (perhaps while holding on a phone call or doing some fairly mindless data entry) are the perfect pockets of time for addressing those tasks that we've consigned to the not-too-distant future.  The operative criterion: will completion of this task from the future bin make us better at cleaning up our nearer-term inboxes?  Something as seemingly insignificant as a desk cleanup may actually make us significantly better at handing our day-to-day workload if we're consistently losing time in a paper shuffle; so why not put the Pocket Theory into practice by tidying up your work area during your next phone call?  (While you're holding, of course; we'd never advocate mentally checking out of a conference call or some such...)

For the painting contractor, perhaps this isn't as salient a theory as for the office worker.  Then again, perhaps it's exactly as salient a theory, though within a slightly-nearer term context: certain tasks that might accompany a job closing (for instance, the collection and tallying of material receipts) might very well be handled while the foreman is waiting on a formula at the paint store.

Though, at Catchlight, we do make every effort to cut down on trips to the store in medias res...green painting, saving on gas, all that good stuff.

For those one-day projects you've been putting off...and off...and off...

Why not hire one of Boston's best house painters for your one-day project?

A little spring cleaning, after all, doesn't have to set your budget on fire!

Reading an article on the 'rehabilitation' of Boston's South End neighborhood, I was struck by how often it is that restaurants are the Robert Pearys of a district's transformation from 'blight' to 'destination.'  Enter the hot new eatery, enter the city's bold and beautiful.

I've often thought a better index--better and far more interesting--might be the amount of home improvement occurring in that specified neighborhood over a given period of time: how many DIYers returning from Home Depot every Saturday morning with a backseat full of projects; how many painting vans parked in the area during the workweek; how many overstuffed contractor bags lining the curb on trash day.

Boston's Back Bay and South End are two very different neighborhoods and yet, not so dissimilar: home improvement continues apace and we at Catchlight are proud to have completed multiple projects in both areas recently.

I am, it should be said, something of a customer service geek.  Sat surveys, creative relationship management techniques, retention rates--these are all manna to my heaven, work wise.  I find it genuinely exciting that so many businesses these days, large and small, have begun to engage themselves daily with the greater good tenets of customercentricity: hyperattention to detail, anticipating and overdelivering on client needs, and above all, treating customers with a singular, studied respect.

And yet, even as this surpassing movement towards all that is good and holy in the Church of Forward-Thinking Customer Service can't help but engender better companies and happier customers, I'm occasionally reminded that a narrower, simpler focus on not doing the wrong things can at times be just as important to a business bent on raising its customer sat through the roof.

There are hundreds of ways to sever a good customer relationship at the root.  None work so neatly as disdain: there's something almost atavistic to the disappointment I feel as a customer when I'm being treated with disrespect.  It's less a personal disappointment than it is a visceral sense of disconnectedness, an unwillingness to tarry any longer where I don't feel welcome, and it's a short leap from that precipice into the churn of seeking out new spots to bring my business.

And make no mistake, as there are hundreds of ways to sever a customer relationship, there are hundreds upon hundreds of ways to disdain your customers to that end; while some, like a haughty, gum-cracking barista, are markedly and transparently BAD FOR BUSINESS, others, such as a prohibitively confusing website (WHERE IS THE CONTACT INFO?!?!?!) or the endless drone of a telephone menu are just as effective at killing customer goodwill.  Killing it softly, indeed...

Most customercentric businesses, I'd wager, already check themselves for customer flashpoints regularly; nonetheless, as we at Catchlight look towards updating our website and marketing collateral in preparation for the upcoming exterior painting season, we'll be paying particular attention to transparence of language, ease of website navigation, and means by which our customers might feel drawn ever nearer, in all that we do.  We've redoubled a substantial commitment to our customers' homes and surroundings in 2008; we aim to match that commitment with a more concerted, inclusive focus on customer contact, and we welcome your thoughts and suggestions in that arena, or any other!

Apres le deluge...le deluge?

Here in the Greater Boston area, it has been a very wet March.  (I can never get my spring maxims correct...is March the month that comes in like a lion and out like a lamb?  Either way, here's a new one: March...it rained.  A lot.)

With the onset of spring and a little bit of sun, who can blame the homeowner for turning his or her weary eyes to the prospect of spring cleaning, brush burning, and a little exterior painting?  Nothing says touchup time like a walk around the house after a storm: paint chips here, mildew there, bubbling and peeling all around.

And while we welcome calls to schedule your exterior painting project, of course, we would be remiss if we didn't note that April is the perfect time to take one last look at your interior.  As much as it pains me to write this--and the pain is nearly palpable after this week's flooding--it will rain and rain again this spring, and the intervening weeks between where we are now and where we'll be by Memorial Day are the best weeks for getting that niggling little interior painting project done--a child's bedroom, an entryway and mudroom, plaster repairs and repaints after water damage.

In fact, our Painter for a Day program may be just what you're looking for...check it out here!

Came across an interesting, if slightly dated, article on Sustainability Best Practices. 

Compliments of your friendly neighborhood green painter, have at it!

Our little guy has recently taken a shine to coloring.  (Actually, if I were being honest, I'd say that he's taken a shine to crayons and markers and all the wonderful things they can do to a coffee table, but we'll be euphemistic and call it 'coloring' nonetheless.)  And this is no passing fancy; this is, quite literally, all that he wants to do from waking to goodnight.  Color.  Color.  Color.

Though we might like to humor ourselves otherwise, in so many respects our worldview doesn't change all that much as the years progress.  A blank slate has its own siren call.  And here is where the rubber meets the road on a good painting project: you say color, color, color; we pick up our brushes and get to it, giving purchase to your creative instinct.

Creativity is a wonderful gift and a proportionately large responsibility, one that we take very seriously: the creative customer or partner is a delight and a challenge, and on that note we're happy to pass along relevant thoughts from one of our longtime friends, designer Christina Oliver of Oliver Interiors: "(Catchlight) makes me look my best and that is really important to me."

We'd love to give voice to YOUR creative instinct...

Under the aegis of Boston's Best House Painters, we often cite our men and women for their hard work, customer service, and dedication.  We wouldn't downplay these citations in a million years; however, without a modicum of pure talent, all the hard work in the world may go for naught.

On that note, a little tidbit from the off-topic society today: the music world is mourning the death of Memphis singer-songwriter Alex Chilton.  After his tenure in the Box Tops (more on that in a bit), he went on to form Big Star, perhaps THE great American rock and roll band.  Not many folks get second acts: his was sublime.

But back to the Box Tops.  You've heard "The Letter" at some point over the years--maybe their version, maybe Joe Cocker's.  It's just one of those songs...

Here, at age 16, Alex Chilton singing lead on the Box Tops' "The Letter".

16 years old!  Pure, raw talent.  We've got a few Alex Chiltons on our team here; you can better believe we appreciate how lucky we are!