See: Squamish business beat—local landmark gets a facelift

It is sunglasses-are-mandatory sunny and close to 30 C on Tuesday afternoon. The typical Squamish late-day wind is more of a light breeze.

But the weather doesn’t seem to faze Sean McCreanor, who is high up on a lift, spreading white paint on the side of the Squamish Baptist Church, protected only by two thin, colourful umbrellas.

The church is likely passed by thousands of people per day as it sits at 2262 Read Cres., on the corner that leads to the Garibaldi Highlands or the Squamish Valley Golf Club.

McCreanor said the formerly butterscotch-coloured building hadn’t been painted since at least 1991, when he arrived in the area.

He came to Squamish from Wolsingham in County Durham, England, at 21 years old.

His company, Cutting Edge Painting, was established in 1994.

He has three “amazing boys,” all of whom worked for him during their later school years and on university breaks. His son, Jordon, has been with him for seven years and is now his “right-hand man.”

A crew of four is working with him on the church’s facelift.

Asked about working in the heat, McCreanor said it is an issue that has become more top of mind in recent years with hotter periods and events like the heat dome. 

"It starts off with a big iced-cooler every day," he said. "It stays in the shade. People top up all day. About the job itself, we cannot let surfaces get hot from the sun. So there's always this strategy and this race as we race away from the sun, or we chase the sun. That's generally how it works. And if we do work in the sun, it's got to be up until 10:30 a.m. to 11 a.m. So we'll start a bit earlier in the day, maybe 7 a.m. and we'll gravitate towards the shade by the time it's just too hot. But in my case, up on the boom lift when there's so much high stuff to do, as you can see, I have a couple of umbrellas. I always wear a hat. I've always got lots of water."

The company does home interiors for six months of the year and exteriors for the other six months.

“It's quite a bit of a race this time of year. We normally hit 30 exterior homes a year and sometimes more than a dozen just trim-only jobs. We're on number 25 now. We have about five or six left to go, and we've already started booking our 2026 season,” he said.

Asked about what colours are hardest to paint, McCreanor said generally reds, blues and yellows.

“These are what we call neutral base colours. The bases are clear. They get injected with a lot of ounces of colourant, and sometimes the coverage is crazy. It's much better with a machine—a sprayer—to get your solid colour on, but a lot of times we struggle with them... Sometimes we'll go two, three, four, even five coats when it comes to coverage,” he said.

What is unique about the church painting is both its size—the company is most often commissioned to paint homes— and how public it is, with so many passersby watching the transformation.

The job will take 15 days, total, McCreanor said. Tuesday was day six.

“It's very special, given that not all our homes are big transformations. They're very subtle. But this one is quite the transformation. Every colour is being changed, and it's going to make the building look brand new,” he said. 

The Squamish Business Beat was developed in response to local demand for more business-focused news. To be considered, please reach out to [email protected].