About Leavemealonebox

The Crew That Starts at the Porch

Leavemealonebox paints the outside of houses in Pasadena. We work out of Del Mar Blvd in the 91103 postal area, and if you drove past one of our jobs you would usually find the ladders set up at the front of the house rather than around the side. That is not an accident. On the housing stock here, the porch is where the money should go first.

Pasadena is full of Craftsman bungalows with deep porches, tapered columns sitting on brick or river rock piers, wood railings, tongue and groove decking, and rafter tails left exposed on purpose because Greene and Greene made that the local language. Those details are the reason people buy these houses. They are also, every one of them, an unprotected horizontal surface or a piece of exposed end grain pointed at the sky. The sun here is not gentle about it, the Santa Anas drive grit into anything already chalking, and the winter rain sits on a railing cap long enough to find its way into a joint.

So we learned the porch properly. How to tell soft wood from sound wood with an awl before quoting rather than after. Why a column base that fits tight against its pier is a rot problem rather than good carpentry. Why a deck coating that looks like the right product in the can may be exactly wrong for what is already on the boards. When to talk a homeowner out of spending, which happens more often than you would think, because a porch with one more season in it is not a job worth taking this year.

How We Work

Small crew, one job at a time, and the same people on your house from the first day to the last. We quote after walking the porch with you, not from the curb. When something we find is carpentry rather than painting, we say so before you have paid us for anything.

Most of these houses were built before 1978, so we assume old paint layers contain lead until testing says otherwise. That means wet methods, ground sheeting and vacuum extraction instead of dry scraping in the open air. It is slower, it is quoted that way, and it is not optional on a house full of original wood.

We do not chase volume, we do not sell coating warranties we cannot personally stand behind, and we would rather do one porch properly than three of them quickly.

Call (626) 516-0168 or find us at 3398 Del Mar Blvd, Pasadena, CA 91103, and we will come and look at the columns.