Can I Just Do It Myself? Cleaning & Sealing Commercial Buildings
We live in a wonderful age of DIY (Do It Yourself).
Sometimes, these projects end up great, like baking your own bread or building a birdhouse. Other times, we’ve tested our limits as human beings to be able to pick up a highly technical skill in an afternoon and expect ourselves to master it by nightfall. Many building improvement projects fall under the latter category.
With decades of experience cleaning and sealing commercial exterior buildings, we’ve seen quite a few failed DIY attempts before. While all these projects started out with the best intentions, each one of our customers ends up saying, “I wish I would have just called you guys first!”
So, if you’re a business considering trying to clean your exterior surfaces yourself this spring, and you find yourself asking any of the questions below, we’d recommend calling the experts instead…
“Which Cleaning Solution Should I Choose?”
Concrete sidewalks, siding exterior, brick, stone, and wood are just a few of the different types of exterior surfaces you may come across when looking to clean the exterior of your professional building. If you go to a local hardware store to pick up cleaning solutions, you will find many different options for each, and you may even see some that are advertised as ‘multi-surface’.
When making your selection, the type of surface you are looking to clean, how it was installed, where it is located on your property, and what type of weather it experiences are just a few of the things you have to keep in mind when choosing the right solution.
If you choose the wrong one, you could end up with a solution that doesn’t do the job properly or thoroughly, you could damage your surface, or you could damage surrounding fixtures like landscaping and other surfaces.
The Forte Surfaces team has spent decades testing and researching the perfect solutions for each project to ensure the integrity of the mediums we are working with and the safety of all those involved.
“When am I going to find the time to do this project?”
Let’s face it – you already have a full time job with daily roles and responsibilities that you need to manage. Adding on a large project like cleaning the exterior of your building is not something that will be able to be completed in a quick few hours or afternoon, especially if you are learning on the go.
The Forte Surfaces team members go through weeks of on-the-job training where they are observing seasoned professionals, asking thoughtful questions, and honing their skills.
“Am I going to mess up? What happens if I do?”
Whenever you’re learning a new skill, you are going to mess up. And each mistake made will be visible to each person walking up to your professional building to interact with your organization or the other tenants in your building.
If exterior cleaning is not something you regularly do, then it will take time, trial, and error to determine the right method to use to properly clean your property. Each time you mess up, you could be adding time, resources, and cost to the project.
“Am I just going to want to call a professional anyway?”
Now we know that this all may seem a little blunt, but we prefer to think of it as ‘tough love’.
Over the years, we’ve seen quite a few projects where someone tried to complete a project themselves only to end up calling us after spending their time, resources, and finances trying to do it themselves.
At that point, we also find that the project most likely requires our team to go back and fix the failed DIY project to start before we can move on to the main project.
So, all this to say, we can confidently stand behind our team and our process to use the correct solutions and tools to complete your project the right way the first time in a timely manner.
If you’re reading this standing in the aisle of a hardware store trying to determine which solution to buy for your project, go ahead and turn around, walk out, and give us a call to get on our schedule today.
After all, this is our Forte.
