Luxury Living with Debrae Little

Wesley Knight 0:00
This is a KU NV studios original program. The content of this program does not reflect the views or opinions of 91.5 jazz and more the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, or the Board of Regents of the Nevada System of Higher Education. Dave

Debrae Little 0:45
Hello and welcome to luxury living with Debray. I am your host. Debray little, where we offer expert interior design advice and inspiration for beautiful living. Today's guest is Lori Clark. She is a senior design account executive with Sherman Williams, and this episode, we'll be diving into how paint stains and coatings can transfer outdoor spaces into stylish, durable and inviting environments for luxury, entertaining from pergolas to pavers, fireplaces to finish To furniture. We'll explore how thoughtful paint choices can extend lifestyle living outdoors, whether it's for game day gatherings or an elegant evening. Soraid. Welcome. Thank you. So let's just jump in. I mean, Lori has been kind enough to have a return visit to luxury living with Debray, and I said, as I said, we are going to discuss outdoor living spaces this time with her, and she's going to share all of that valuable information we need for making our outdoor spaces look look Good and are durable and serve our needs for entertaining during this fall season. Wonderful.

Laurie Clark 2:06
Yeah. Thank you so much for having me again. Debray,

Debrae Little 2:10
so let's start with durability in the desert. Obviously, we live in the desert, and so tell me about the different products that we might use on surfaces outside to to extend their life, and that they are durable and are heat resistant or whatever. I'll let you take the stage now and talk to me about the products that work in our desert community in Las Vegas, Nevada, wonderful.

Laurie Clark 2:42
Well, and I have a similar I live in Phoenix, Arizona, so very similar climate that you guys have there. And durability is definitely key with all of our heat and the sun that's kind of blasting on our exterior spaces. And the one thing that you want to do when you are painting or staining or doing something like that, the first thing always is to identify that you want an exterior product. There are interior products and there are exterior products. They are made differently. They have different raw materials in them. Obviously, an exterior product needs to be quite a bit more durable, so you want to identify that first, and then once you're like, identifying what you want to do. If you want to paint, you want to stain, whatever it is that the substrate requires. You want to make sure to properly prep. You could have the best product out there, but if you don't prep it properly, the product won't stick, if you will, right? So you want to make sure to, you know, scrape any loose paint, power wash any dirt or debris off the substrate. And then, once you've done all that, then you want to prime it, and then use your top coat. And you know, we can look at like those different top coats, like our emerald exterior products, our emerald rain refresh, our duration exterior Those are excellent products that will hold up really, really good and an exterior environment. But prep is key, making sure that everything is done properly before you put that coating on, and then your coating will last a real long time.

Debrae Little 4:27
I see So are there. So based on what you're saying, is the first step, obviously, is prep, and the second is to determine what's the best product for that substrate or item that you're hoping to paint or refresh. Is there any guidance that you could offer say for grills or heaters? You know, oftentimes, I mean, our temperature has just changed and has turned and so it's a little. Cooler at night, but we certainly don't need the heaters during the middle of our summer. But now, but, but certainly now, we might pull out that that heater, or we might decide that we're going to grill some hot dogs or something like that, or we have high heat surfaces around the the the grill and different things like that. There's probably aluminum or some type of metal that we'll find in and is there a way to to refresh those items at all?

Laurie Clark 5:32
So those require very specialty coatings. You can't put regular paint on something that's going to have high heat like that. And we're not talking like our 115 degree heat. We're talking, you know, upwards of, you know, 500 600 degrees on your grill, 1000 degrees. So those require specialty coatings. We do have, like a spray paint that you can buy in our stores that's just a basic black but we also have through our product finishes, very specialty coatings, that if somebody wanted to do something kind of snazzy and fun and different kind of colors, and I would definitely direct them to our stores, and our stores can kind of work with them on What is it that they're doing? Are they doing the heater unit? Are they doing a grill? Is it a fire pit? How close is the flame going to be to that? So that takes very, very specialty items to use. And I would definitely say that you want to work with a professional when doing that, because if you were to just put, like a regular paint on something like that, it would just bubble right off, you know, it just would not stick well. So it's a specialty coating. I would refer anybody who wanted to do that to one of our stores, and you can find them at Sherwin williams.com the closest store to wherever they are, that they can go and talk with our professionals in the store. Okay, other than like a regular black spray paint, again, you'd be looking at like a specialty coating.

Debrae Little 7:08
So then, having said that, then what about for walls, exterior walls outside that are, say, undercover under my undercover patio, or something like that. How would I freshen those up? What would I would I do? Would it be? Would it be a typical exterior paint that would be useful for these areas? Or, I mean, I have clients that asked me, could they paint their pavers? You know? I mean, it all kinds of requests these days for for folks that wanting to refresh their backyards

Laurie Clark 7:44
absolutely so it's funny. I've been with Sherwin Williams for 20 years, and I'll never forget this. I had a store manager say to me once, just because you can paint something doesn't mean you should. Okay. That has always stuck with me. But if you have a wall that is underneath, kind of like an overhang in your backyard, that is still considered an exterior wall, and you would want an exterior coating on that. So again, I go back to the prep work. Clean it. Make sure you scrape off any loose paint or anything that's on there, once you clean it, let it dry. I don't know if Las Vegas got what we got in Phoenix this weekend, but we are wet. I mean, it rained a lot, so you know, you want to make sure that that wall or that substrate is very, very dry when you go to put your coating product on it. And then, if it's never been painted before, you're going to want or it's been quite a while, or if you're changing the color, you want to do a primer, and then you can go ahead and put your top coating on it. Now, when you look at like, asphalt pavers or things like that, we do have coating products that you can put, say, like on cool decking and stuff like that. So you certainly could do that. And again, I would refer people to our stores to see which specific product is going to work best for them. If you're wanting to paint a paper, you might be a little bit more limited in that color choice, you know, and certainly a paper that's on the ground. I, in my opinion, I always think you kind of want it to blend in and look, you know, kind of like natural, like, you wouldn't have like, a, like, an odd color, like purple or something. I mean, maybe you would, that would be great. But you want to, you want to make sure you're using the proper product. What you're putting on the exterior wall is not going to go on that paver. And we have concrete coatings and cool deck coatings that they could refer you to,

Debrae Little 9:48
I see. So there are products available for that, for the do it yourself, or perhaps that might want to do that. But, yeah, but I also, I find that oftentimes center black walls. Which are very popular here in Las Vegas, depends on the price point of the home that you'll find them. And I have had the opportunity to have a couple of clients go ahead and paint that because it looks like a and I've never been to prison, but it could be a gray concrete prison looking wall, and they're like, we want to add some color to it, whether it just be, you know, off white or a gray, or something, something that gave it, yeah. And then there are murals that are drawn on those walls to make it more cozy. And, you know, something more interesting to look look at. And when you, when you stare out to your your back sliding glass door to the backyard,

Laurie Clark 10:45
well, and certainly on those types of on those cinder block walls, you want to make sure to put a waterproofing up, right, because you've got water coming up from the ground. You might have sprinklers that are hitting it from your neighbor on the other side. So what your client is looking at the wall that they're looking at, they want to make sure to use a waterproofing primer, which we have in our stores, and then they can use any of the exterior products on top of that. I have two neighbors here in my neighborhood in Phoenix. They did their interior, like their side of the fences in, like a matte black just to kind of blend in with like their space out there, and it looks amazing. It really, really looks cool. But again, you have to put a waterproofing up there, otherwise it'll just peel off. You want to make sure that you have the substrate prepared properly to receive that paint.

Debrae Little 11:36
What about decorative artwork? Metal artwork? You know that I find that a lion a lot of clients want to decorate that center black wall. Maybe they want to paint it, but then they also want to decorate it with like, some type of metal fencing, maybe a an image of a sun or a rainbow or frogs or whatever the case may be. Is there is that something that we should be concerned about as well? I mean, obviously we wanted to be clean, then it needs to be prepped. I've got that. And then the other items that you talked about was making sure that it was a waterproof paint. Is there something that's durable that we could use to paint, those accessories that are those wall art that we love, that we you know, that's maybe faded over time, but we want to hold on to them.

Laurie Clark 12:26
Yes, for sure. And for the wall, it's not necessarily waterproof paint, but it's a waterproof primer. So it's a waterproofing primer that you put up there, and then you would put the exterior paint on the outside, and that's very specific to like, like, a cinder block wall. But yeah, like, you know, the different types of like, you know, like, you say, like, your metal artwork that's out there. If that was something that you wanted to kind of like, refresh, you certainly could again, once you've prepped the substrate. So let's say, you know, like, you said, a rainbow, or some of those, I've seen them where they're kind of like, you know, round, just like pieces of artwork out there, and they get faded and dull from the sun. And if someone was doing it themselves, they didn't have, like, a professional painter do it, like, if I was going to go do it for myself or something I had in the backyard, I might use a fine grit sandpaper and kind of sand it down, make sure it was clean. Get a proper primer on it for whatever that substrate is, if it is a metal, if it's metal, again, the store will direct you into which primer you should use on top of a metal, for an exterior metal, you prime it, and then you can paint it like if you wanted to refresh it with a color or something like that. So you could certainly do that. So there's lots of different things outside that you could do if you have, like patio furniture. Patio Furniture is not cheap. I mean, it is certainly an investment. And so if you've got, you know, some patio furniture that is powder coated, and you've had it for many, many, many, many years, and it's really fading, or you want to change the color on it. We are product finishes. Stores do sell powder coatings. And so again, our stores can refer you to someone, if they don't have somebody that can do that, that is definitely like a professional job, like, you know, your customers aren't gonna be able to powder coat it themselves. But we do have those products, and we do have people that we can refer you to to do that. I wouldn't suggest maybe painting patio furniture that's a really good quality that has been powder coated. You want to have that professionally done. So that's something that will last another 20 or 30 years. But certainly if somebody just wanted to paint it and give it a refresh, and it was just like, I just wanted, I wanted to, I want to spruce it up this season, and maybe I'm going to do it next season too. I mean, yes, so long as you've cleaned it, you've primed it, and then you can put the exterior coating on it.

Debrae Little 15:01
Yeah, that would work. Well, that sounds like a major refresh. We can just powder coat or spray our way into a whole new design palette and color scheme. And maybe we can even take the opportunity to freshen up areas where we want to focus in on our team colors or something like that, since football season and for that matter, so is hockey. You know, I do so we wanted to, we definitely want to appeal to our customers who were really fanatics or fans of the season as well. Because I here in Las Vegas, since we now have several professional teams here that we find that a lot of folks are entertaining this time of year, and they want to be outside, and they want things to look as good as they can. And I think one of the biggest tips that you just gave us was the fact that please clean before you do anything. Prep is very, very important, or either it's a disaster and then you can't paint your way out of everything. Perhaps, maybe you need to powder coat as well, right? And what other suggestions could you make to homeowners that are wanting to freshen up their backyards, or, you know, do a few updates in terms of paint. How best could they utilize some of the stains and the finishes that you offer in the backyard?

Laurie Clark 16:34
Well, again, if you have, like, maybe that wall that is under an overhang, and that might be a really great spot to have, like, a pop of color, you know, maybe it's black for the Raiders, right, and there's other raiders, right, right, right? And then, and then your hockey team, and of course, you're getting the A's, which my husband is super excited about, because he loves the A's. So if you wanted to, like, just have that one wall be a pop of color. You could certainly do that. That would be really fun. And then, of course, adding, you know, maybe blankets and pillows and things like that to the cushion to kind of bring that color around. You know, if you have, like, a concrete floor patio, or you have a cool decking patio, maybe you paint a carpet on it right like you can take the instead of putting a carpet out there, you can use the exterior product, the exterior cool decking product, and create a design on the floor that is more of like a carpet, but it's a painted carpet. So those are ways that you can add color with paint or stain and really kind of make it pop and have fun with that. You know, especially if somebody's not, I don't, maybe someone's a really, you know, just a fan attic, like in each season, they've got a different team, you know, they've got hockey, they've got football, they've got baseball, they've got basketball, and they're going to paint it each season to kind of match. That wouldn't that be kind of fun, you know, spring, summer, winter and fall, but we have all of our different teams, and that wall kind of becomes that team wall. So that's a great way to do it. I know we're kind of restricted in a lot of HOAs for like, the rest of the house to be painted, but certainly in your own private backyard oasis, you could definitely create a statement in that own space, I think, you know, with paint and then, like you said, on your block wall, so long as we've prepped it and primed it properly, you know, if somebody wanted to have an artist come in, I have many artists that I work with that kind of paint those interior block walls, and maybe they paint them with, you know, wild flowers or rainbows, or maybe they do a team theme, if someone's, like, really, really into it, and, you know, they have a whole team sport thing back there. That's a really fun thing to do. I'm personally not that creative, so I would have to hire someone to come in and do that for me. But yeah, I think those are really great ways to kind of jazz up the backyard and just make it really fun for those kind of team sports and entertaining and stuff. And I know here in Phoenix, we have just with these storms that just rolled through all of a sudden. It has cooled down, and it is wonderful out in the backyard now so, and I think that's for you guys as well.

Debrae Little 19:27
Oh, no, certainly, certainly, yeah, this is the time to be outside, definitely in Las Vegas, and take advantage of our beautiful desert that we have here. I'm wondering about pergolas in particular. What advice can you offer to clients for updates on the pergolas? Because a lot of them are made out of recycled plastic or different products like that, so that they are definitely. Definitely more heat tolerant, you know, and and some of them are made. There's so many different substrates or things that are available for that, but I do have that comes up often. Can I, can I? Can I paint my percola? Can I restain it? What can I do to the pergola to revive it and bring some life into it, you know, right? And oftentimes I found that some of the pergolas are actually aluminum that look like look like wood, you know.

Laurie Clark 20:35
So it's really going to depend upon what that substrate is, right? Is it wood? Is it aluminum, or is it, I don't want to say plastic, but kind of like a vinyl type situation, and I would refer to kind of like the manufacturer, like, what is the manufacturer saying? If you have some of those substrates that are vinyl, like, you want to make sure that you're using vinyl safe colors, and you can certainly find that on our website, on Sherwin williams.com and we don't, we don't have a lot of vinyl siding in Las Vegas or Phoenix in the desert area, because what can happen with the heat is vinyl tends to work a little right? So vinyl safe colors are usually lighter toned colors, so they're not absorbing a lot of that heat. So I kind of take that thought process and kind of apply it to that pergola. If that pergola is that vinyl material, you're probably not going to want to paint it black or dark brown or something like that, because it could then retain some heat that might I don't know it, you know, I'm not familiar with it enough, so you want to be careful with that. And again, I would refer back to the manufacturer of that pergola. And again, looking at that substrate, if it's wood and you want to stain it, we certainly have a number of different stains you can do. And you'd want to have it sanded down, take that top coating off, so that you can put the new stain down and put, like a, you know, a polyurethane finish or something over it to help protect it. And then, if it was aluminum, again, we have products that can go on that, and it all just rolls back to prep. And so I would say it's kind of a bigger, bigger project than a lot of di wires. Certainly, there are di wires that know what they're doing, but referring to your professional painter for what it is they feel is best in this situation, you know, depending again, what that substrate is. But the substrate always is going to need to be clean, dry and dull to receive any of that top coating, right?

Debrae Little 22:47
I see What recommendations would you make for I know we talk a lot about cleaning and prep. Is there a product and a product line that Sherman Williams offers that is basically allows us to prep properly, or for that matter, once we've done our painting, to maintain it so that it is durable and resistant to the heat, and to say, rain or wind, or in any of our incumbent weather that comes about in the desert.

Laurie Clark 23:24
So that's always like in your product selection, like, what are you picking to go on the substrate? And so, like, our emerald rain Refresh is something that allows water to beat up and kind of like drip right off and not soak in. And it will also, it kind of cleans it as it's kind of dripping off, if you will. So when you go to kind of spray the hose on to, like, wash it off, it'll beat up and kind of clean off real easily. And so, so really, it's just prep and then, like, figuring out what that top coat is going to be, and then, dare I say, cleaning the walls right? Like we get monsoons in the desert, where dust is like, blown around all the time, and sometimes all it takes is just hosing off the outside and getting that dust off of it. You know, the dust can really be a killer to not only our painted finishes, but, you know, like our cushions and things that are outside. And sometimes all it takes is just washing it off, just washing it off with a hose and getting it off the substrate. So that's, you know, cleaning it, in the beginning, taking a proper coating that's going to go on it, like for what your needs are, and then just maintaining it, making sure, like we don't have any, you know, like any blistering, or anything like that. Sometimes, if you have water intrusion, maybe your stucco is cracking or something kind of knit. Seeing that in the bud. Because if that were to happen, that could then, you know, that's like a bigger issue altogether, obviously, but just kind of keeping an eye on it, washing it off, and you'll have many, many years of, you know that space,

Debrae Little 25:15
I see you're right. I think sometimes it's, it's a maintenance issue. Oftentimes, I find that clients will not cover their outdoor furniture throughout the season, they you know, and they'll leave it outside and and I think sometimes they need to do some maintenance and maybe perhaps cover it, invest in some covers for the furniture, and for that matter, also their pillows, so that they can look fresh and just as nice as they did from one season to another. So I think it just takes a little work on their part, but I think that you've given this some pretty good advice on trying to maintain that look of that furniture that you there is such a huge investment, and whether it's something that has to be powder coated or maybe that needs to be painted, maybe it's an adirondack chair that's actually wood that can really be cleaned and then stained, and then have that Top coat on it, which would be a major refresh. I love those, those chairs, and they certainly can work for many different design schemes. And they can be playful and fun, and they can also go inside as well. I finding that a lot

Laurie Clark 26:36
of those on on my porch as well, those at the wooden Adirondack chairs I like, I think I bought them. Gosh, it's been, like, 20 years ago, and we've had them painted, like, with our with Sherwin Williams, emerald urethane trim enamel that I put on it. And they look beautiful. And I just clean them off from time to time. I don't have them in direct sun, so they're not getting beat up, you know, with, like, all of that UV stuff, but they look beautiful. And so it really is just a matter of, kind of taking care of it. And then, just like, a non paint related notation, I have in my backyard, one of those shade sales, which you see kind of in commercial applications, you know, that kind of shade, like a shade structure that goes over, like a playground or something. I have this little spot in my backyard and it just, you know, it needed some shade, and so I had one of those made for my backyard. And I think it's been, like, about 20 plus years that it's been there. And every now and then that I have the manufacturer come out, and they'll kind of restitch it for me, and they go, I cannot believe this is in such good shape. And I'm like, I wash it off, like, monthly, like, I spray the dirt off. And they're like, that's all you need to do. That's all you need to do is spray the dirt off. So that's just another testament to just clean it off. You know, it'll hold up really well,

Debrae Little 28:03
oh my god, I can envision you cleaning everything now.

Laurie Clark 28:07
Oh my god, going to the gym that day. I usually just take all the stuff out in the yard and wash it all down.

Debrae Little 28:17
Oh my goodness. Well, I'm gonna say thank you for listening to luxury living with Debray and our special guest. Thanks to our special guest, Laurie Clark from Sherman Williams, for joining me. And I'm Debray little reminding you that true luxury isn't just indoors. It's a lifestyle that flows effortlessly into every outdoor space until next time, stay inspired and keep designing your best life. You're listening to luxury living with Debray on K, U, n, b, 91.5 jazz and more you.

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