The Spec Said Tnemec. Most Contractors Would Have Googled It.

The Client

Stone Way Apart­ments is a 70-unit afford­able hous­ing build­ing man­aged by Bell­wether Hous­ing in Seat­tle’s Fre­mont neigh­bor­hood. Stone Way Apart­ments is one of dozens of prop­er­ties Bell­wether oper­ates across King County.

Man­ag­ing a port­fo­lio as large as Bell­wether’s means every con­trac­tor rela­tion­ship gets test­ed even­tu­al­ly by a dif­fi­cult job site, a sup­ply chain fail­ure, a res­i­dent com­pli­ca­tion, or a spec that requires more than a stan­dard paint crew can deliv­er. Lisa Hawkins has over­seen enough cap­i­tal projects to know which con­trac­tors hold up under pres­sure and which ones don’t.

All Cov­ered has been in that port­fo­lio for years. Stone Way is part of why.

The Spec­i­fi­ca­tion

Before a paint can be select­ed, some­one has to spec­i­fy it. For Stone Way, that some­one was Bell­wether’s build­ing engineer.

The spec came back: Tnemec.

Most paint­ing con­trac­tors have nev­er encoun­tered Tne­mec. It’s not on the shelf at any paint store. It’s a spe­cial­ty indus­tri­al and archi­tec­tur­al coat­ing brand used on bridges, water treat­ment facil­i­ties, food pro­cess­ing plants, and high-demand com­mer­cial build­ings appli­ca­tions, where stan­dard paint sim­ply isn’t engi­neered to perform.

For stuc­co specif­i­cal­ly, Tne­mec’s archi­tec­tur­al mason­ry coat­ings are designed to con­form to the sub­strate with­out alter­ing its tex­ture or vapor trans­mis­sion, while pro­vid­ing col­or sta­bil­i­ty and long-term dura­bil­i­ty that out­lasts com­mod­i­ty prod­ucts. The engi­neer’s rec­om­men­da­tion was­n’t arbi­trary. Stuc­co is porous, moves with tem­per­a­ture, and needs a coat­ing that does­n’t just sit on top, it needs to inte­grate with the surface.

We sourced the prod­uct, placed a spe­cial order, and added buffer stock to avoid run­ning short mid-project.

The Col­ors

Stone Way’s exte­ri­or repaint was­n’t just a main­te­nance project. It was a visu­al redesign.

The build­ing fea­tures a mul­ti-col­or scheme with a dis­tinc­tive lime green that anchors the cor­ner façade. Get­ting the col­or place­ment right required delib­er­ate plan­ning, which sur­faces car­ry which col­ors, where the tran­si­tions fall, how the breaks read from the street.

The result is a build­ing that reg­is­ters dif­fer­ent­ly from a block away than it did before. That kind of work requires painters who are pay­ing atten­tion, not just cov­er­ing square footage.

The Rela­tion­ship Continues

Stone Way was not our only Bell­wether project, and it was­n’t the last. When a dif­fer­ent Bell­wether prop­er­ty need­ed repaint­ing, we were the call they made. Bell­wether knows we’ll source what they spec. They know we’ll hold steady when sup­ply chains fail. They know we’ll han­dle what­ev­er shows up on the job site.

That’s why they keep calling.