In my years of sign painting I've learned that business owners often develop a relationship with their sign. Running a business can be tough and the ups and downs take them on an emotional roller coaster. Often they think of their sign as an old friend and reliable employee, who's been with them since the beginning. Customers form emotional bonds with signs as well; how many times have you seen a familiar sign and felt transported back to all the memories of times spent patronizing that particular business? Because of this, businesses in need of a new sign are often reluctant to replace the one they already have, even though it may be faded, chipping away, and damaged. Any sign that sees constant exposure will sustain a lot of wear and I recommend a repaint a minimum of every ten years.
Once you start thinking about repaint opportunities, you will begin to see them everywhere. Offering a repaint is a good way to introduce yourself to a customer and has a higher conversion rate than selling a brand new sign. Once they have your number they'll call you for more. And for sign painters just starting out, it's a great way to gain sales experience and learn some different techniques. Most experienced tradespeople probably take the repaint process for granted as it is relatively straightforward, but I'd like to run through it and share some techniques that will increase speed, and therefore make you mo' money!
The project was to repaint a sandblasted high density urethane (HDU) foam sign. Graffiti aside, it had taken a beating and was losing paint chips - a repaint was overdue. Sandblasted signs become high rise condos for spiders so the first step is to use a stiff bristle cleaning brush to remove the dust and debris from all the crevices and faces. Then, sand the face of all the letters with medium grit sand paper (100-200 grit) to remove loose paint and roughness.
Next it's time to coat the entire board with background latex paint. First, mask off anything adjacent to the sign so you can work fast and not worry about stray paint getting anywhere you don't want it. Then, thoroughly coat the entire sign with your choice of background paint. I use exterior water based paint through a Graco airless electric hand sprayer but you can do it almost as fast with a decent three-inch cutter brush. See Wooster, Purdy, etc. Don't worry about avoiding the face of the letters, you just want everything to have an even coat.
The next step is to put a coat of oil-based enamel on the letters. This sign has a medium-dark background so I used 1 Shot Chromatic Fast-dry block out enamel, which only comes in white. Using a 3-inch cotton roller for smooth surfaces, carefully coat the letters with vertical strokes and then diagonal strokes. It's okay if the coat seems transparent. Once all the raised areas have a first coat go back to where you began and immediately start applying a second coat the same way. If you see the first coat lifting off it's too tacky, wait fifteen minutes then try applying the second coat again. Go slow, you will probably hit the background accidentally with the roller once or twice but just keep going, you will clean that up at the end. I also needed a 1/4" fitch to paint white in gaps where the foam had broken away.
The fast dry chromatic only needs 1-2 hours to dry, so that gives you a good opportunity to paint the border using a slightly darker shade of water based latex than the background. Use a decent two inch cutter and give it two coats; make sure you jam the loaded brush into any dents and chips in the substrate. You want to seal it really well.
Lettering and outlining is done with 1 Shot enamel and a fitch. Since we primed all the raised surfaces with white block out enamel the colors will go on smooth and appear very vibrant. A single coat was sufficient for the lemon yellow and fire red I used. Once that's done, return to the background: using a rag with a little bit of mineral spirits, wipe away stray block out enamel and then with your 2" cutter touch those up and wherever else needs it. Give the whole sign a thorough inspection because once you walk away it probably won't be touched for another 10 years. I'm going to come back and apply some vinyl decals to the round panels at the bottom but the repaint process is complete. Remove all the masking material and clean up.
If you're a beginner some of these tools may not be in your repertoire but if you want to be able to tackle any job with the ease and speed of a traveling snapper then a gallon of block out enamel and an airless hand sprayer are a worthy investment. You'll sell repaint jobs when walk-ins are slow and you'll surely find other uses that will speed your process when working on-site. I like to think of repaint jobs as giving you good sign karma - that one day someone will repaint one of your original signs and extend its life for the good of its owners and their customers.
