Jobsite Journal: Minnesota Cabin by Nick Slavik Painting

How do you make a new cabin look like it’s been in the Minnesota Northwoods for 100 years? Nick Slavik takes us behind the scenes of one of his most challenging paint jobs. Emerald^® Urethane Trim Enamel, Cashmere^® Interior Acrylic Latex and Sherwin-Williams^® wood finishes were key factors in the project’s success.

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Video Transcription:

Narrator:

Nick Slavik’s customer had a challenge for him. Take a brand-new cabin and make it look like it’s been nestled in the north woods of Minnesota for the last hundred years.

Nick Slavik:

Everything about this house is compact, quality, handmade, crafted. It’s just a beautiful, beautiful house and it aligned directly with the core values of my business where I love to take everything that was good for the last 200 years in the painting and decorating industry and combine it with the most technologically advanced coatings we have and then, kind of marry those two so you get the best of both worlds.

Narrator:

One unusual aspect was the use of hand-cut oak shakes on the exterior. Nick consulted with his Sherwin-Williams rep, and they decided that Duckback^® Premium Translucent Wood Finish would be perfect for this part of the job.

Nick Slavik:

I’m a huge fan of oils, especially outside for wood, and I wanted something that was a beautiful, thick, long-lasting finish up there, because I didn’t want the client to have to go up into northern Minnesota and spend his time at the cabin maintaining it. It’s a two-step oil process, it builds some coats, it looks like varnish, it’s got a beautiful satin finish. It’s a little bit thicker product, you have to work it in a little bit but once you’ve sealed the shakes up, that second coat goes on like, just beautiful. It’s so smooth and so good, it’s almost like varnishing a piece of furniture. You see the depth of the wood, it makes it look like you took some care and applied some love to this stuff.

Narrator:

Inside, Nick used Emerald^® Urethane Trim Enamel on doors and trim and Cashmere^® Interior Acrylic Latex on the walls.

Nick Slavik:

One of my favorite finishes is Sherwin-Williams^® PVA Primer coupled with two coats of Cashmere^® Low Lustre Interior for drywall. I have a lot of satisfying finishes that I do inside, outside – wood finishes – but when I get a chance to put my hands on new drywall and see that whole process through between cleaning the drywall until it’s just squeaky clean, getting PVA Primer on it, sanding the PVA primer down, cleaning that again and two coats of Cashmere^® Low Lustre, I would put that up against any new construction finish – general new construction –finish out there today. It looks like hand finished plaster when it’s done. And that aligned with the core values of not only my business but this project too of what can we do to make it look good minus a 30-step process. In the standard “prime it, paint it twice thing,” how can we push this to a new length?

Narrator:

Nick had already tried Emerald^® Urethane Trim Enamel and was impressed with its shorter recoat time.

Nick Slavik:

One of the biggest benefits of the Emerald^® Urethane was we coated the entire millwork package – windows, doors, ceilings, bead board, all the casing, all the base board – twice in a day. And, with normal sort of hybrids or oils that is an impossibility.

Narrator:

To save further time and travel expense, the painters camped out in the unfinished cabin.

Nick Slavik:

You know our heads were two feet away from it at night, double coated during the day and it saved us a ton of time but we didn’t sacrifice any quality. So, we had calculated up there that it probably saved us five guys about a day-and-a-half worth of time on this job site, so not only do you maintain your quality standards, I mean that’s tangible. That’s really tangible.

Narrator:

Working with Sherwin-Williams was another key to the success of this project.

Nick Slavik:

Obviously when you want to do a showcase house, you want to pick a good partner for that and you go to somebody who’s got the logistics and the quality as well. Knowing that you have both of those tools at your disposal – the logistics and the quality – is a wonderful thing, and I couldn’t ask for a better partner on the project.