Pintura Adelante is a professional painting and decorating company serving El Matarraña and Bajo Aragón.
We are excited to offer the local community the decorating service that everyone wishes for – prompt estimates, clear advice, punctual and polite decorators who work through to completion, keeping to a clear fixed price, and all work guaranteed.
The owner, …, draws on over 40 years’ decorating and management experience: 30 years on site and ……
Traditionally trained, he also worked closely with leading paint and tool manufacturers and suppliers from Europe, Scandinavia and the USA, testing new coatings, tools and techniques, sharing findings with the trade and DIY enthusiasts.
To ensure the philosophy at Pintura Adelante is sustainable, we invite the most talented craftsmen in the region to work with us on projects that require more than just a painter’s touch.
History has proven time and again that cheap today often works out to be expensive tomorrow. However, working smart often works out less costly than a service from companies operating as if it’s still 1990.
Work history
Trained in the 1980s and London City and Guilds Advanced Craft certified, I have spent over 30 years on the tools combining traditional painting and decorating skills with cutting-edge advancements in paint and tool technology.
It’s all about striving for the highest standards of workmanship efficiently and cleanly with no fuss.
Work to one standard
I still follow the advice of my trainers and teachers at technical college.
Be proud to be a professional painter. It’s your job to make the work of every other construction trade look even better.
I instilled that same philosophy in five apprentices all of whom went on to become top craftsmen – ironically mostly kitchen painters. And I have sought out work colleagues with a similar mindset ever since.
Never do cheap or shoddy work, because the price is soon forgotten when the paint fails.
Use the best materials and put them on right. That doesn’t mean a service has to be expensive by default. Working smart, often, two coats of a proven but lesser-known product can outperform a standard 4-layer system!
CV
I’m a Brit but consider Spain my home. I “know” much of Spain from the Pyrenees to Málaga having cycled it once. I arrived in Andalucía on the 11th of September 2001. Spain has changed since then, but I still wouldn’t live anywhere else in Europe. (Thanks to Brexit, I guess I don’t really have a choice!) I have lived in Teruel for a few years now, and before that in Asturias and Castilla y León.
Global painter and decorator
I have traveled extensively and worked, consulted and chatted for hours with the best in the paint industry around the world.
USA
In the 80’s I discovered pressure rollers, acrylic enamel, the Blues, the Renaissance fair scene and half-pound burgers. It was all new to me but I enjoyed every minute.
I returned in the early 2000’s and had the pleasure of decorating a Victorian Town house on the East coast. After a non-stop 50-hour drive to the West coast, I entered the wooden boat world and learnt more about hard work and traditional paint than I ever learned on land.
There’s a saying: “Painters wanted, boat owners need not apply.” I put that right. Seven days of hand-scraping paint with a blade and heat gun, cleaning off mahogany planks that change angle in every direction every 10cm. It’s quite the event, but once over, it’s on to priming and filling hundreds of meters of gaps between planks with cotton caulk. And then that all needs sealing with various linseed oil-based fillers before you even think about painting, filling, sanding over and over. Ten coats of varnish on the masts. Copper-based bottom paint that weighed a ton with a fraction of the toxicity of original copper paint, but still the label scared me into being super health and safety conscious.
The craftsmen in the yard appreciated a proper paint job, especially one, who worked on the rigging on the ships in Pirates of the Caribbean. They taught me a lot about materials and the value in doing everything right first time – at sea people can literally die because of bodged work.
Spain 2.0
I lived in Béjar, Salamanca in 2003 (before the Blues festival era). I was taking a break from the painting trade at that time, and I taught English and cycled the mountains including the infamous la Cobertilla for a couple of years. But at home I used a one-coat paint on the walls – Titanlux Monocapa. It took longer than normal to apply, but what a surprise when it covered in one, just as advertised! That was a first for me. In England at that time, a single coat of Solo was so bad it was surprising it ever got launched. Probably still around though!
Caribbean
When I returned from Barbados, where I painted some kitchen cabinets for a good friend of mine, the UK Customs official didn’t react well to my humour when I told them, “That’s really good shit, mate. You won’t find anything that good in England.” He was inspecting a tube of paintable silicone guaranteed for 20 years. Unheard of in the UK! They didn’t smile at all and almost destroyed the contents of my suitcase looking for more incredible stuff from the Caribbean.
Finland
I’ve never had the chance to visit the land of the Midnight Sun, home to the world’s best education system and the only nation to successfully repel Russia from its own soil. But Finland, the birthplace of renowned paint brand Tikkurila and the innovative Mirka dust-free sanding systems, is definitely on my bucket list.
UK
In 2009 the Great Financial Crisis was in full swing and like most luxury items, the demand for new kitchens plummeted. But you just know that the desire for new kitchens never busts. So I offered homeowners a service to restore older oak, pine or laminate kitchens to showroom quality with a hand- painted finish. I came up with a reliable preparation and paint system that could be applied in situ with minimal fuss and disruption. And it could be done for 15-20% of the cost of a new kitchen.
That worked. I started to build a network of specialist painters offering the same service. It was my best contribution to the trade, I think. But I still have some life in me and there is definitely a lot to learn and share here in Spain.
Netherlands
From Vliegenthart and Lacq to Akzo-Nobel, Epifanes, van Gogh, Flow Control, Steelmaaster and BICCS, the Dutch are still paint masters. Never short of innovative ideas and very hospitable, I picked up a lot of useful information while touring some of the cleanest paint factories I have ever seen.
One classic line from a Dutch painter looking through my portfolio. “If I offered to paint my neighbour’s kitchen cabinets they would tell me where to go. Who the hell in Holland paints kitchens!?”
Best leave it to the Anglo-Saxons from across the Channel, then!
I don’t talk much unless you get me started on painting !
I openly share a lot of my trade knowledge because it is best that way for everyone: the public, other painters in the trade and me.
I have often been asked, “But what about competition, telling them your tricks?”
“I don’t see that as a problem, and I’ve never been short of work.”