Tag: paint

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Cottage Life

Are these the cottage building materials of the future?

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Cottages are often nods to the past—built by great-grandparents and renovated by generations since. But with increasing recognition that building materials do much more than shift an aesthetic—they boost energy-efficiency and overall comfort—it’s time to look ahead. Whether you’re starting from scratch, or addressing issues in an existing cottage, consider future-forward tech:

Reach for the top

Options range from simple (and affordable) reflective roof paints to more expensive solar shingles—or even a living roof of organic matter. What we put on top can have a big impact on how we keep our cottages cool. Learn more about it.

A rising tide floats all cottages

Could your cottage survive a flood? It might, if you adopt an old technology that’s finding new purpose. The Buoyancy Foundation Project, out of the University of Waterloo, has been studying amphibious construction. It works, says one researcher, the same way a rubber duckie works in your bathtub, but with a “vertical guidance system” so your cottage doesn’t simply float away. Learn more about it.

The butterfly (paint) effect

Keen to produce a beautiful paint without toxic dyes and pigments, researchers in Berkeley, California, found inspiration in the blue morpho butterfly’s incredible colour. The blue of the butterfly, they say, is produced by tiny overlapping microscopic scales arranged across the surface of the wing that reflect light. By achieving this structural colour in paint, researchers say, they can create a far safer (and more spectacular) coating. Learn more about it.

Bacteria-built brick

Concrete’s carbon footprint is the size of Sasquatch so alternatives are highly sought after. But a brick made of cyanobacteria, the same stuff that turns our beloved lakes green with algae? Yes, please, say the University of Colorado researchers, who insist there are no dangerous health effects from their bacteria, sand, and gelatin creations. What’s more, these bio bricks sequester carbon, effectively erasing concrete’s behemoth footprint. Learn more about it.

Whale-food windows

Nature is often way ahead of us in its problem solving. Consider krill, the tiny sea creatures that release a pigment in bright sunlight to protect themselves from ultraviolet rays. Windows in a University of Toronto lab got the krill treatment when researchers discovered they could similarly create a way to shut out the sun’s rays. Learn more about it.

A whole earth approach

If you’re starting from scratch, consider the earth-friendly techniques of the aptly named Earthship, rammed earth construction, or straw-bale. All beautiful, all sustainable, and all will be the talk of your cottage community. Learn more about it.

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Cottage Life

Cottage Q&A: When should I stain my new deck?

By Radoslav Cajkovic/Shutterstock

We replaced our old deck boards with new pressure-treated boards. It’s nice that they are a pleasant shade of light brown. How do I keep them close to the same colour? The contractor who built the deck said I should wait one year before doing anything. One year is up this fall. I don’t want the deck to turn grey. Should I put some type of sealer on it this summer? Will that keep the deck the same colour? Or, should I wait longer, and use a sienna brown stain? I recognize that I may have to do the sealer or stain every few years.—Gerry Bleau, via email

May have to? You probably will have to. Deciding to stain a deck is like deciding to adopt an African grey parrot: “Once you start, it is a lifelong commitment,” says Wayne Lennox, Cottage Life’s project builder. “I’m not a big fan of treating a deck with anything.” But it’s your deck. If brown is what you want, brown is what you shall have.

Lennox suggests avoiding a sealer. “They potentially seal moisture in as well as keep it out, possibly leading to mould. I would go with the stain.”

While you can slow weathering by using a semi-transparent stain, or a water repellent with added toner, “in general, you need colour in the product to protect the wood surface against UV damage and fading,” says Jana Proctor of Timber Specialties, a company that makes wood preservation and protection products. “If you like the original colour of the brown pressure-treated wood, choose a colour similar to it.” Try the product in a hard-to-notice test area first to make sure you like the look.

Great, you’re all set. But why did the contractor tell you to wait 12 months? 

“More than 20 years ago, pressure-treated wood in Canada had a water repellent added to it at the factory level,” says Proctor. “You had to wait for that to wear off, usually for about a year, before you could apply something else,” she says. “But that hasn’t been done in so long, you’d think that information would have gone away by now.”

How to treat a slippery deck

All our experts agreed that you’ve held off long enough. “You don’t need to wait a full calendar year,” says Marshall Black, a cottage, deck, and dock builder in McKellar, Ont. You do, however, need to make sure that the wood is completely dry. “You wouldn’t want to apply anything, say, after a night of rain.”

Got a question for Cottage Q&A? Send it to answers@cottagelife.com.

The article was originally published in the August 2022 issue of Cottage Life.

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Cottage Life

Why you should use these paint colours in your cottage (or not)

By Suriya KK/Shutterstock

Disclaimer: We didn’t consult any design or real estate experts for this article. That should become immediately obvious.

Thinking of selling your cottage? Thinking of renovating to sell it in the future? Then you should think about paint colours. At least, according to a new survey by real estate marketing company Zillow you should. Zillow surveyed more than 3,000 “recent or prospective Canadian home buyers” to gather feedback on their reactions to images of different rooms painted different colours. How interested were they in touring or buying the place? How much would they pay? The results were…confusing. Still, what lessons can cottagers take from all this? We’ve broken it down.

Survey says: Canadian buyers were willing to pay more—about $6,500 more—for a place with charcoal grey kitchens, bathrooms, bedrooms, and living areas. 

Lesson for the cottage owner: Charcoal grey the hell out of everything. Paint the porch grey. Paint the closets grey. Got a bunkie? Grey it up. Buy a grey dog, and include it in the listing photos.

Survey says: Even though green kitchens and bathrooms are trendy—wait, they are?—buyers would pay less for them. And don’t even think about painting your kitchen sunshine yellow. According to the results, yellow kitchens, and for that matter, living rooms, were “generally unpopular.” Well, obviously. Why would anyone pay for sunshine when they can get the real thing for free? Blue kitchens and white kitchens scored higher.

Lesson for the cottage owner: Paint your kitchen blue and white. Better yet, paint your kitchen ceiling blue with white puffy clouds, like the ceiling in the Venetian hotel in Las Vegas. You’ll be bringing the outside inside! 

Survey says: Burgundy is big in bathrooms—for people who speak French. Apparently, buyers from Montreal would be willing to pay up to, roughly, $4,400 more for places with burgundy bathrooms.

Lesson for the cottage owner: If you can’t source a paint called Burgundy, go with Bordeaux, Merlot, Berry, or, in a pinch, Maroon. Just don’t paint your cottage powder room the colour of fresh blood. That smacks of serial killer.

Survey says: Contrary to the results suggesting that people don’t like green, buyers from Calgary would pay several thousand more for a mint green kitchen.

Lesson for the cottage owner: According to Zillow, “When study participants thought the homeowner had similar tastes to them, they perceived the home more positively and were also more likely to make an offer more than $2,000 higher.” So, give prospective buyers from Calgary mint chocolate chip ice cream as soon as they enter your mint-green kitchen. Double the mint, double the offer! Unless, like many people, they think mint chocolate chip is gross because “it tastes like toothpaste.” In which case, you’ve shot yourself in the foot. And now you’re left with a mint-green kitchen and a freezer full of polarizing ice cream. Sorry.

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Cottage Life

Cottage Q&A: Best paint for an aluminum boat

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I want to paint the bottom of my aluminum boat. The original paint is chipping off. I was going to use a spray-paint primer, but I’m concerned about the environment. Is there another approach? And after the colour, do I need a clear topcoat?—Mel David, via email

While nobody’s going to argue that spray paint is good for the environment—it does release volatile organic compounds—it’s at least not as bad as it used to be. Today’s spray paints no longer contain chlorofluorocarbon propellants. (Countries began banning those in 1978.)

A spray-paint primer is convenient, but if you don’t want to use one, don’t. Brad Schmidt, a specialist with the Yacht Division of AkzoNobel, suggests a thinned-down epoxy primer instead. You can apply it with a brush or a roller; a thinner formula “will allow the primer to get into all the nooks and crannies” of the boat. Follow with a multi-purpose epoxy primer before you put on your colour; use a marine-grade polyurethane paint.

None of our experts thought that you’ll need a clear coat overtop. But everyone emphasized—repeatedly—how important prep is going to be. “Painting aluminum is always tricky,” says Schmidt. “It’s a different beast.”

Five painting tips that our experts swear by

Sanding properly is key—you need to remove every bit of that old, chipping paint. “Everything needs to be sanded down,” says Ryan Mack, the owner of Northern Lakes Boat Works in Gravenhurst, Ont. “You can’t bond to bad paint.” 

Shop around for the right products first. Plenty of companies have coatings for marine applications, says Gary Wedemeyer, a product specialist with the Automotive/Marine Aftermarket Division of 3M. It’s easy to find info on application procedures on their websites, so you can investigate before you buy. “I have personally applied a high-quality marine-grade exterior enamel to the bottom of a 12-foot aluminum boat using a brush and roller,” says Wedemeyer. “I cleaned and scuffed the surface according to the paint company’s recommendations, and I didn’t topcoat it.” A few years later? His tinny is still looking great.

Happy painting! Or, uh, cleaning, cleaning again; sanding, more sanding; priming a bunch…then painting. 

This article was originally published in the October 2021 issue of Cottage Life magazine.

Got a question for Cottage Q&A? Send it to answers@cottagelife.com.