Tis the season: Window Paint Tip

Storefront
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I was just curious how many of you have store owners who get their windows painted? My wife had never seen it until she moved to New Mexico.

Around Christmas, it seems like every store owner gets their windows painted down here and it’s a perfect time to capture new business “Who’s going to remove that paint in January, here’s my card…”

So I thought I’d give a few tips for those who run into it.

Different painters use different paints and techniques but there are basically 4 possible results when scraping:

  1. The paint flakes off and scatters everywhere making a huge mess.
  2. The paint refuses to come off and you bust a couple of razors while cursing the world in general and the painter in specific.
  3. The paint disintegrates and makes a huge mess.
  4. The paint magically comes off and you’re happy.

#4 never happens to me.

Get yourself a hip clip and a nice plastic bag to dump the paint scrapings into. Or drape a bag over a wet floor sign (some signs come apart at the joint and you can clip the plastic bag in the joint to hold it).

Get a second mop from the one you’re going to use to clean the window. I’ve had some paint just disintegrate and your mop will be ruined until you can wash it properly. It’s also nice to have a change of water available or a second bucket.

Get yourself some sprayaway. Sprayaway or any foaming cleaner is my best tool for paint removal (well, besides a good razor blade). It doesn’t matter what type of paint they use, just spray the foam on thick and let it soak. If the painter airbrushed the windows, a razor is going to scream while trying to take it off unless you pretreat the paint with foam.

I did a Denny’s that was airbrushed and I felt bad for the patrons while I was trying to scrape. The next time it was up, I pretreated and it came off in a quarter of the time.

After the sprayaway has done it’s magic (usually only takes a few seconds), you can mop and scrape and dump into your trash bag. This method takes care of problems 1 & 2 and number 3 is hit or miss depending on how cheap the paint was.

You wouldn’t believe how much headache the sprayaway has saved me. When it’s freezing out and you’re trying to get the job done but the paint refuses to be razored… yeah it’s nice to have a trick up your sleeve.

Oh, even with my few tricks, I ran into one job that the outline refused to come off. After I scraped everything, I still had to scrub the outlines off with a scrubby pad. When I asked about it, turned out the painter didn’t have a grease pencil so the ladies inside let her use eyeliner. That stuff is a pain to scrub out.

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Good tips, can you explain with more details on the pretreatment? I have a new storefront that currently has window paint, and plans on repainting for the new seasons. Anything to make life easier.

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Yup, just get you a can of Sprayaway and let it soak for a little bit. It’ll make your life easier!

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I have a few of my customers that have paint for the holidays. I charge a butt load and the price goes up by the minute the more frustrated I get. What is it in spray way that works so good is it the ammonia or do u know. Because if it is I might just dump ammonia in my spare bucket this time. Yeah I don’t usually tell them how much I’m charging until I see how hard it is to get off.

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Sprayaway doesn’t have ammonia. The window tint guys recommend it pretty exclusively for that reason.

I know your frustration. I had a guy who would paint his windows every month. It was his main way of advertising and it worked great for him. He’d call me, I’d scrape it off, and he’d have it painted that afternoon or the next day. So I got to know a lot about paint scraping.

I tried a bunch of different solutions including Simple Green, but I think the magic of Sprayaway is that it foams and sits on the paint and softens it instead of running down like the other stuff I tried.

I think any foaming cleaner would work. When the paint gets soft, it comes off in nice ribbons that are easy to flick into a bag.

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Back in the days when I worked for guys , man it seemed like every store I cleaned would paint there windows up . Now I only have one maybe two customers that do it. Thank god January could get mighty cold,nothing like scraping paint off a window in 18 degree weather been there done that .
I’ll have to try the Sprayway thing . I usually put straight ammonia in a small pump up sprayer hit the painting let it sit ,then hit it again, then it usually peels right off .
With a pump up you don’t ruin your tools no mess in your bucket I did so much back in the days I had to figure out a better way than bucket an strip Wahser .

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Good post Jared.

I love the beginning of the year bonus! (bold^)

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Same here Mike this is a trend in storefront window cleaning that I am very happy about.

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Thanks for the Sprayway tip Jared. I thought I had it all figured out. :wink:

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[MENTION=12729]JaredAI[/MENTION] Thanks for the tip… Now I know why you’re the most “liked” this week.

So how do you price the removal? Assuming they are a regular customer do you just do 2 or 3x your normal price or is this a stand alone service? (which just brings me back to my original question) I know most people would just say figure out what you want to make per hour and how many hours it takes yada yada- but I’m also wondering if there is a “pain-in-butt” factor that might make you seek more desirable compensation.

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Some customers are offended if you charge extra!!! Be careful.

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That sounds about right to me, but only a window cleaner not a loyal customer. :wink:

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Here’s another tip!! When removing the paint, try not to let it fall onto the ground. The concrete sucks it right up and the stains are very difficult to get out.

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Yeah, you can definitely charge a pain in the butt fee for paint removal. But like [MENTION=441]BostonMike[/MENTION] said, some people will get upset for charging extra.

If they were my customer, I’d usually charge $1 - $2 per window to remove the paint. The Denny’s I did was a weekly job and they never skipped but I still charged them an extra $25 for paint removal depending on how much paint was on there. The owner said it took him 4 hours to remove it himself one year so he was happy to let us do it.

The monthly storefront guy was 14 windows and charged him like 25 bucks for outside only. His took about 30 minutes to do and he was a great customer. I traded him out a smoked brisket one Thanksgiving. Best. Trade. Ever.

So it really depends on you and your market. People would pay me to remove the paint because the painters would come out to paint and if you were foolish enough to pay them to come back and remove it you’d still have to pay me to remove it. The painters rarely would come back and scrape so you had some offices that had paint through march.

Yeah, you’ll have to figure out what you want to get from it. At the time I was averaging $40 / hr on storefront. But just note that sometimes the paint will kick your butt and sometimes you’ll kick it’s butt.

When I’d run into stubborn paint, I’d just put another coat of foam on it until it behaved.

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This is a great point. My monthly guy’s sidewalk looked like someone went nuts with paintballs. But it wasn’t me it was the painter. He had been scraping it and would make a mess. When he painted he made a mess.

My ocd wanted me to clean the sills and get all that paint off, but my practical side said it would get messed up again next month so I just left the sills ugly and the owner didn’t mind.

I just got a chip clip (I’d use a hipclip now) and clipped a garbage bag to my towel bag. If there were 2 of us, I’d drape a trash bag over a wet floor sign and lean it up against the building.

But yeah, once that paint hits the concrete, it just dissolved.

Oh, if the store used that snow in a can crap, just know that there is nothing you can do to NOT make a mess. That stuff sucks in the worst way.

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The foaming cleaner also works on those stores that painted them for their “Grand Opening” signage. One customer used like house paint on their windows. The benefit is that since it was sort of glossy, you could clean right over it. It was pretty much water proof. When he wanted me to remove the paint (after getting his real sign) it took me forever to get a couple letters off. I got pissed and went digging through my van and found some foam. Sprayed it on the letters and the heavens opened up, I heard angels singing, and I was done in like 10 minutes.

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Can’t wait to try Sprayway. I have only one customer that painted there windows this year ,an I do charge her 50 it took me about a half hour last year I thought when I gave her the price it was going to take me an hour. That’s why I do it before they open :). My old boss never charged wonder why hmmm could it be cause he had me :). I get those phone calls “mike it’s February you have to get that paint off of Gino’s”. " i know I talked to him he said it’s cool " Mike I’m here now he never said that ". " Oh I meant the other Gino’s . Lol

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As far as pricing paint removal . This is my thinking on it . If it’s not your regular customer then price at your regular hourly rate . If it’s your regular customer then cut that rate some depending upon the type of customer .
When your pricing paint removal it will be hard at first to understand how long it will take you might get burned at first, but look at it like a learning process . There are some good tips here always use new blade an switch it out sooner than later .

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I always charge 3-5$. Per window. Depends on how big it is if it’s a freakin mural more if it’s just like a reef on a smaller piece of glass lower.

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