About Coullaudkoulinsky

The Painters Who Take the Sash Out

Coullaudkoulinsky works on the old wood in Santa Monica buildings. We run out of Lincoln Blvd, and the jobs that fill our calendar are the ones other painters quote around: double hung sash that has not moved since the Carter administration, casing gone soft where the sill meets the jamb, a south facing door whose enamel has chalked to a flat grey powder you can wipe off with your thumb.

We came at this from the painting side rather than the carpentry side, and that shaped how we work. A finish is a system, not a color. On an exterior sash the system starts at the glazing rabbet and ends at the last coat of enamel, and if any layer underneath is wrong the top coat cannot save it. Putty that was never allowed to skin will bleed through paint. A bare rail primed a week after it was exposed has already taken on moisture. Caulk squeezed into a joint that is supposed to shed water turns the joint into a reservoir. None of that is visible on handover day. All of it decides what the building looks like in five years.

Why We Argue for Repair

The economics here get presented backwards a lot. A pre-war sash was milled from tight grained old growth softwood, joined with pinned mortise and tenon, and designed to be taken apart and serviced. The failure modes are the putty, the paint and the cords, and every one of those is a consumable. Replacing the whole unit throws away the only part that is genuinely irreplaceable, the wood, in order to renew the parts that were always meant to be renewed.

That is not a preservation speech. It is what we see when we open them. On a typical block of Ocean Park or Sunset Park bungalows, four windows in five need cord work, a reglaze and a proper repaint, and the fifth needs a bottom rail repair on top of that. We will tell you when a sash is genuinely finished, because they do exist, and we would rather say it than pretend a filler job is a restoration.

Working in an Occupied Building

Most of what we touch is lived in, and a lot of it is rented. Narrow lots, permit parking and shared driveways mean we stage small, keep the sidewalk clear and load out at the end of each day rather than treating the street as a yard. Sash that leaves for the bench comes back before the weather does, and anything opened is closed and secured overnight.

We also plan the day around the coast rather than the clock. Mornings here are damp enough that exterior coating is a bad idea more often than not, so interiors and bench work go in the morning and the exteriors get the warmed afternoon. It reads as slow. It is the difference between a finish that holds and one that chalks.

Want a look at your worst window? Call (424) 305-7634 or find us at 6155 Lincoln Blvd, Santa Monica, CA 90403 for a survey and a written number.