How to Prepare for Your Commercial Fire Damage Restoration

Office fires happen from time to time. It’s not uncommon for under-maintained break room appliances to catch fire and, occasionally, an old outlet or faulty appliance will cause a spark that catches the carpet or baseboards alight. Fortunately, these fires can usually be put out quickly but the damage done can be extensive. Sometimes it is just smoke and soot damage with light scorching or a wrecked appliance, but other times entire sections of wall or partial rooms may need to be rebuilt.

Naturally, you have scheduled commercial fire damage restoration for your office. But the process will go more smoothly if you know how to prepare. Believe it or not, most of your preparation steps are damage control relating to soot, which is the most common source of fire-related damage after a fire. Soot is staining and very easy to spread if you are not careful.

Avoid Tracking Soot Away from the Damaged Area

The first step is to be very careful about where you step. Soot is staining an in many cases, there is a great deal of loose soot on the carpet, walls, and nearby surfaces that could easily be spread throughout the office if someone is careless. Be careful and strict about not tracking that soot further out into your office space. Do not try to clean up the soot yourself, allow employees to try and clean it or task your maintenance task to vacuuming the area. This is a recipe for disaster and can potentially achieve exactly what you are trying to avoid.

Wrap and Remove Damaged Furniture

If there is damaged or soot-covered furniture that is at risk of tracking soot around the office or being moved by employees, remove it with care. Your first instinct may be simply to grab the furniture and carry it out but this is also a common recipe for tracking soot through the office, not to mention staining your work clothes. Your best bet is to use plastic tarps and tape. Gingerly wrap the furniture in the tap, so as not to disturb the soot, and seal the tarp with tape before carrying the furniture out of the office for restoration or disposal.

Cordon Off the Damaged Area

Find a way to block off the damaged area from curious onlookers and careless employees who might walk through the soot If you have actual cordon ropes or retractable ribbons normally used to control customer lines, use these to indicate that employees are not to cross the boundaries. In a pinch, line the outside of the damaged area with desks or chairs lined in a tarp to create an uncrossable barrier. This way, employees cannot track through the soot or curiously investigate a potentially dangerous area.

Provide Alternate Services for Staff if Necessary

If the damage occurred in a way that blocks the break room or restrooms, naturally you will need to provide your employees with alternative facilities. Break room damage can often be temporarily remedied with a mini-fridge and microwave placed on a table on the other side of the office. If the fire damage blocks an important restroom, allow your employees extra time to go one floor up or down or, if you are a small office, ask your nearby neighbors if their restrooms can become available until repairs are complete and be understanding about the time it takes for employees to walk out and back as needed.

Be Ready On Schedule

Fires can be highly disrupting to your workplace schedule, but remember to keep track of when you have scheduled your restoration services and have someone available to oversee the process. You may want this taken care of ASAP during work hours or you may want to schedule for the nearest weekend with a maintenance professional present to open the doors. If your commercial space has recently experienced a fire and you need fire restoration services, contact us today. We will do everything we can to meet your needs and your schedule.

3 Ways to Visualize Your Home's New Color Scheme Before Painting

Whether you’re redecorating a home for yourself, getting ready to sell, or preparing a flip for market, repainting is an essential first step. Fresh painted walls not only make a home look fresh and new, the right paint can make the house pop in ways it never did in previous color shades.
Of course, visualizing the right color scheme for a home isn’t always easy. You need to compare how the shades interact with the space. You need to see how the natural and artificial light play with the shades from one wall to the next. And you need to do all that without painting and then changing your mind. Fortunately, between online tools and color samples, you fully visualize your new painting plan before you lay a single drop of real paint on the walls.
Today, we’re here to share the three best tools and methods for planning your new interior color scheme. 

1) Sample Color Schemes

The first step for most interior paint projects is to look at other paint designs that you like. There are millions of interior decor photos on the internet that can give you an idea of the color combinations that might work well for your home. Once you find a few examples you like, the question is how to derive a real paint color from the images.
For this, you can use the SW tool Color Snap or another similar online tool designed to pull paint colors from images. Most of these tools allow you to upload an image and then extract the approximate (by brand) colors that could be used to recreate the palette. Color Snap has an additional and very useful feature, in that it comes with a chrome extension called Snap It that can pull color palettes from any image you find -without- downloading and re-uploading it into the tool.

2) Virtual Painting Visualization

The next step is to virtualize your theoretical new palette onto images of your home interior. There are online tools for this, too, and it’s surprisingly easy to both set up and experiment with. A color visualizer can help you see how paint colors will approximately look when added to your real space. This may be your best tool for figuring out which rooms will look good paler, darker, or with an accent wall to really make the layout pop.
Another SW tool, Color Visualizer, or something similar on another site, can help you do just that by using uploaded photos of the house.
First, create a photo-tour of the home including different angles of each room. Make sure to get plenty of clear, even light if possible. These photos can be uploaded into the tool, your paint areas selected, and then you can edit away testing different paint color combinations on each wall, trim, and cabinet.
Your sample photos will also serve as great ‘before’ pics once the new color is on the walls.

3) Real-World Wall Color Tests

Finally, you’re ready to start testing paint in the real world. Keeping in mind that virtual paint doesn’t always turn out the same on real walls, it’s important to test sample patches of real color up on the walls you intend to paint. However, painting on the walls is not actually our best bet.
The best way to sample paint colors on each wall is actually with poster board. Chances are, you’re going to want to test each color against a few different walls, see how the light plays out, and how the colors look painted, dried, and next to each other. Painted poster board shows the paint correctly, but it’s a lot easier to test and move around than paint on the wall.
Start by labeling the back of each poster with the color you’re painting. Then flip it over, tape it down, and cover the entire poster with your color edge to edge. When it dries, add a second coat just as you would on the walls. Once that dries, untape it and use the board as your portable test-swatch. Tape it onto walls you want to try, tape it next to accent colors, and when your decisions are made, you’ll have the exact paint color on the back to avoid shade confusions.

Bringing the Color to Life

Once you’re 100% sure that the paint you’ve chosen is perfect for the house, it’s time to put your plan into action. Using professional tricks like removing the baseboards and savvy use of painter’s tape, use your tried and tested palette to bring the colors to life. You know you’ve done right when your home pops, every color accenting a wall or curve that your family or the new buyers will love. 
If you’ve visualized the perfect color scheme for your home, rental, or flip then Satin Touch is ready to make those colors come to life. Don’t hesitate – Contact us online or call the painting professionals at Satin Touch today at (612) 388-7275.

How To Deal With A Leak In The Water Heater

Few things are more frightening than finding a mysterious puddle by your water heater. A giant 50-to-60-gallon tank that holds 125 degree water can cause severe damage if it malfunctions and lets all that water into your house. The good news is that you can fix your water heater, or at least minimize the threat. Here are the steps you need to take to deal with a leak in your water heater.

Stopping The Damage

 1. Find The Water Source

When you first note a puddle under your water heater, dry the area and inspect the heater carefully. If nothing jumps out at you, put a dry towel underneath your water heater and wait a day. If you have a leak somewhere, the towel will get wet and you will be able to trace it back to its source.

2. Turn Off The Power

If you have determined that the water is leaking from your heater, turn it off. If it is electric, switch off the power at the circuit breaker. If it is gas-powered, turn off the gas at the base of the tank.

3. Turn Off The Water

Most water heaters have valves above them that control the flow of water into them. Turn this off. If you can’t reach the valve, you might have to shut off the water for the whole house.

4. Determine The Source Of The Problem And Fix It

This step is necessarily vague as there are a number of things that can go wrong with a water heater. A variety of them are listed below. In general terms though, valves and fittings can wear away and need replacing.

Possible Sources Of The Leak

1. The temperature pressure relief valve (the little lever at the bottom that drains water to a safe place when the pressure gets too high in the tank) can wear down after years of use. Lift the lever and see if that stops the leak. If it doesn’t, the valve will need replacing.

2. The pipes leading to the inlet and outlet of your tank may have gotten corroded. The damaged lengths will need replacing.

3. A washer on the drain valve may wear away and need replacing, or the drain might just need cleaning up.

4. If water is dripping from the seams in your tank, it is time to replace the water heater.

5. Anode rods might need to be re-screwed in with plumber’s sealing tape.

When To Call A Professional Restoration Company

Whether you had a slow drip from your tank or a sudden flood, the water can do serious damage to your building. It can soak up into dry wall and seep down into the concrete, causing stains and weakness in the structure. A sudden blow out can leave a good inch of water on your floor, and this exposure can warp and weaken wooden parts of the home. Carpet flooring and other features can start bleeding colors and lose shape. Worst, within 24 hours mold spores will start sprouting, leaving their tell-tale smell and causing people with allergies to them to feel sick. If your tank has saturated a part of your house, you want to call a company who can dehumidify your house as soon as the water heater has been taken care of to prevent any of that from happening.

Fortunately, Satin Touch is on call around the clock to dry out your home. If the water damage is severe, we will inventory, pack up, and move your belongings to a warehouse where we can treat it for the water damage. Once it is all safe, we will return it to you.

Satin Touch takes our job of restoring your home seriously and want to help you. If you want to know more about our services, contact us.

Why You Should Hire a Professional Champlin Interior & Exterior House Painter

Champlin, Minnesota Home Painters

You love your Champlin home, after all, it’s where you and your family have made your best memories. Even so, there are some things that you would like to improve. Time has taken its toll and the paint on the exterior and some of the rooms inside isn’t in the best shape.
A coat of fresh paint would sure make a big difference both inside and out. While painting is certainly a project that a homeowner can do themselves, it’s not as easy as it looks or sounds. If you aren’t a pro, your results will be less than stellar and you won’t be satisfied. This is just one of the reasons you should consider hiring a professional house painter. Here are a few more:

Experience Is a Must When Choosing A Champlin Painting Company

If you want the best results from a new paint job, you need someone with experience. The last thing that you want is for someone to practice on your home, even yourself, it’s too important. Customers who choose Satin Touch know that all of our painters are the best in the business and that they have the experience and knowledge to produce high-quality results. No matter how complicated the project, or how large it is, we make sure that our customers are satisfied with every brush stroke.

The Right Tools and Equipment

You might think that painting your own home isn’t much of a deal and that it doesn’t take much. The truth is, most people don’t have the proper tools and equipment to do a quality job on their own. For example, there are a variety of different types of paintbrushes that have very specific uses.
If the wrong brush is used, it won’t yield the best results, in fact, it can make the entire job look amateurish and unfinished. A professional painter will have all the right tools and equipment and they’ll know how to use them to get the best results.

Avoid Costly Mistakes in Choosing a Champlin Painting Contractor

The number one reason to hire a professional house painter is to avoid common mistakes that have to be fixed later. A few of the problems DIYer’s encounter include using the wrong type of paint, failing to properly prep the walls or siding, not using painter’s tape, and making a mess of themselves and their home.
A professional painter will always recommend the right type of paint, prep everything before beginning, and protect the customer’s home from spills, splatters, and other unruly messes.

Improve Your Home’s Value

Even if you don’t plan on selling your home in the near future, you still realize that it’s an investment. Everything that you do to improve it should have a positive impact on its value. A sloppy paint job, whether it’s inside or out, won’t do much to improve its value, in fact, it may even make it worth less.
Our professional house painters will help you determine the right colors and apply the paint in a way that not only looks good, but also lasts. When it comes time to sell, you’ll attract more customers and get a better price.

Contact Satin Touch – Your Champlin, Minnesota Painting Solution

For more than 30 years Satin Touch has been helping homeowners in Champlin and the surrounding areas reinvent their homes. We’re highly experienced professionals with the tools, equipment, and experience to produce exceptional results and happy customers.
If you’re ready to put a fresh coat of paint on your home, don’t reach for a brush, contact us at Satin Touch instead. We’ll happily provide you with a no-hassle, no-obligation, free quote and we’ll help you make the best decisions with regards to color, paint type, and the extent of the job. In other words, we’ll work hard to make sure that your home looks beautiful for you and your family.