Painting Wizards paints houses, roofs, complexes and commercial property in Woodstock and across the City Bowl. 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 Woodstock
Woodstock is Victorian and Edwardian terraces and semis, much of it with original lime plaster and decorative mouldings, alongside converted warehouses. The property mix is terraces, semis, converted industrial buildings and a growing mixed-use component.
Lime plaster has to breathe. Sealing a Woodstock terrace with a modern waterproof coating traps moisture in the wall and the paint comes off in sheets – a breathable mineral system is the correct answer.
The conditions a coating faces in Woodstock
Woodstock sits in the City Bowl, which gets around 750 mm a year and wet winters and a funnelled summer wind. The result is moisture moving through old lime plaster, which lifts a modern impermeable coating within a season if the wrong system is used.
Across City Bowl the practical consequence is moisture moving through old lime plaster, and failure at parapets and gutters, and a repaint interval of five to seven years, less on a parapet or a boundary wall. 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 the work involves
- 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.
How we price a Woodstock job
Painting is priced on area, surface condition and the number of coats, so nobody can give you an honest Woodstock 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.
Close to Woodstock
See painters in City Bowl for every area we cover in this part of the Western Cape.