Welcome to our New Blog! |

Hi! Welcome to Raelistic Artistic’s new blog! I’m Rael Hay owner & operator of Raelistic Artistic Painting & Design here is Kelowna BC. Read along as I begin to unearth some of the useful tips I’ve picked up along the way about painting, design, choosing colours, easy home improvements and a swack of other fun topics.

As we’ve just officially entered into “Exterior Season 2012” I thought it would be fitting to write an article on where to begin with updating your exterior.

  1. Stand at the front of your house. Do you like what you see? – this may seem like an odd place to start, but exterior is all about curb appeal. Pretend you’re an interested buyer. Be honest with yourself – or your ‘pretend self’ in this case…
  2. Start with something easy like weeding and trimming over grown shrubs. That will give the ‘real you’ a sense of accomplishment, and the ‘pretend potential buyer you’ a new take on the curb appeal.
  3. Now this part may seem like a bit of self promotion… but I believe the most important step of updating any exterior is to call a colour consultant, interior decorator or interior designer and ask for an exterior colour consult.
  4. Look up their website in order to see if you like their work, and most importantly, make sure they’ve worked on exterior colour choices before, and are comfortable doing so. As an interesting side note, not all decorators/designers are confidant or well versed in choosing exterior colour palettes. I find in a lot of cases designers are choosing colours from their offices, and not in the lighting the colour will be featured in.   Each space’s unique lighting changes the way colours appear can sometimes be intimidating for the less experienced.
  5. The reason calling a colour consultant is so important is:  you will gain a plan. A tasteful plan. Your consultant will take your ideas and work with you to bring them to reality showing you various options during your appointment.
  6. As much as you may be tempted to think, “how hard can it be? – I got this.” Unfortunately in the industry we see this on regular basis, a home owner thinks that they’ve chosen the ‘right’ colours on their own, spending thousands on paint and applying that colour, only to realize it’s not at all what they’d hoped for, which sadly really dampens the whole exterior update experience.
  7. Moving on… Now that you have your colour palette as chosen by a professional, you can begin to implement the plan.
  8. Call for at least 3 quotes to compare costs of having your exterior re-painted or re-stained. Next time, we’ll talk about some of the insider questions to ask when you’re meeting with painters to have your exterior work quoted.

Here’s a great example: “Exterior Season 2011” before and after photos of Raelistic Artistic’s colour consulting/curb appeal work. We were contacted by Cutting Edge Concepts – local Kelowna BC website designers, to aid in giving their ‘lovely pink stucco’ a face lift. It took a bit of convincing especially to change the colour of the brick, but in the end they were thrilled with the new look (and still are!) What started as changing the stucco colour, ended up a total transformation. We custom colour stained the brick sections, re-painted the pink stucco, the dividing boards/facia boards, the garage doors, front door, and even the mail box posts!

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