Downtown Lincoln is stepping up its parking game, and Kaser is involved.
Haymarket visitors will likely be familiar with the red, blue, and green parking garages. What they may not realize is that long ago, when I was still in college, Kaser Painting, Inc, painted the interior of those garages, and Kaser Blasting & Coatings supplied the colorful, high-performance coatings on the trademark aluminum signage outside.
It’s been almost a decade, and the coatings are holding up well. So when Parking Garage 4 came up for bid we jumped at the chance to coat it.
As its name implies, the yellow garage will have bright yellow signage, supplied by Nebraska Sign Company and coated by yours truly.
We started by blasting the aluminum with crushed glass, to help with adhesion. I briefly considered powder coating these parts, but decided to stick with liquid, in no small part because of how well the red, blue, and green coatings have held up all these years. Why try to fix something that works?
Kaser then sprayed an epoxy primer, and two coats of a high performance polyurethane in Safety Yellow.
Anyone who’s worked with bright yellow coatings will tell you they tend to be finnicky. Yellow requires more coats, and seems more prone to chalking and fading than other colors.
The project took a while – partially because several of the pieces were 26’ long, and partially because the coatings took a long time to cure between applications. Cure times are easily the most frustrating aspect of liquid coating for a powder coater like me. There’s nothing to do but wait.
Next time you’re downtown and you catch some bright, glossy yellow out of the corner of your eye, think of Kaser, and let me know how we did.
