Painting Wizards paints houses, roofs, complexes and commercial property in Elgin and across the Overberg. Send the form on this page with what needs doing and we will come out, measure it and put a written price in front of you — itemised, so the preparation and the paint system are separate lines rather than one number.
The building stock in Elgin
Elgin is apple-growing country – farmhouses, packing sheds, cold-store buildings and workers’ housing across the valley. The property mix is farmhouses, large agricultural and packing buildings, and village housing.
Packing and cold-store buildings have their own requirements – washable, sometimes food-grade surfaces, and work scheduled around the harvest.
The conditions a coating faces in Elgin
Elgin sits in the Overberg, which gets over 1,000 mm a year in the apple country and cool, wet winters and high humidity. The result is over a metre of rain a year and persistent humidity, so mould and moisture behind the coating drive the repaint rather than sun damage.
Across Overberg the practical consequence is mould growth and moisture behind the coating rather than sun damage, and a repaint interval of five to seven years with a breathable system. A coating put on over a failing one fails at the rate of the layer underneath it, not at its own — which is why the preparation, not the paint, usually decides how long the job lasts.
What we do on site
- Damp diagnosis first — rising damp, penetrating damp and condensation look alike and need different fixes. Painting over any of them wastes the job.
- Fungicidal wash — mould and lichen are killed, not covered. Painting over live growth is the difference between a five-year job and a one-year one.
- Breathable systems on old lime plaster — sealing a wall that carries moisture traps it, and the paint comes off in sheets.
- Exterior — walls, trims, gutters, fascias and boundary walls, booked around the winter rain rather than into it.
- Interior — walls, ceilings, skirtings and joinery.
- Roof — moss and lichen treated before any coating goes on.
Two coats over a prepared surface is standard, but on this side of the mountain the sequence matters more than the count: fungicidal wash, then drying time, then primer, then topcoats. A litre covers roughly 6 to 8 square metres per coat on smooth plaster and 4 to 5 on rough or porous work. We allow 4 to 6 hours between coats in summer and considerably longer in winter, and about 7 days for a full cure — which is why exterior work here is booked for the drier months rather than squeezed between fronts.
What a quote covers
Painting is priced on area, surface condition and the number of coats, so nobody can give you an honest Elgin figure over the phone without seeing the surfaces.
The quote states the square metres measured, the preparation included, the system specified and the number of coats. Where damp is present it says what was found and what has to happen before painting, because that is the part that decides whether the job lasts.
To start, we need the suburb, whether the work is inside, outside, the roof or a combination, roughly how big the property is, and what condition the surfaces are in — sound paint, flaking, damp, or bare plaster.
Where else we work nearby
See painters in Overberg for every area we cover in this part of the Western Cape.