Interior Painting

Most of our interior work falls into three shapes.

A refresh is walls and ceilings in occupied rooms, usually to sell, to rent, or because the color has not changed in fifteen years. A full interior is walls, ceilings, trim, doors, and closets across the whole house, typically done in a window between owners or before furniture arrives. A single room is exactly what it sounds like, most often a kitchen, a nursery, or a room that has just had wallpaper taken off it.

Whichever it is, the sequence is the same. Protect, prep, repair, prime, then finish. Ceilings first, then walls, then trim, because working the other direction means cutting into finished surfaces.

Most of our customers stay in the house, so we work around that rather than pretending it is a vacant job site.

Floors get covered and taped. Furniture gets moved to the center and wrapped, or moved out if the room is small. Doorways to rooms we are not working in get sealed so dust from sanding does not travel. Outlets, switches, and fixtures come off rather than getting cut around.

We work in a sequence that keeps rooms usable. Kitchens and bathrooms get scheduled so they are not both down at once. Tools and materials get consolidated at the end of each day instead of spread across three rooms overnight. At the end of the job the site gets cleaned, hardware goes back on, and Ed walks it with you before it is called finished.

Ceilings get treated as an afterthought and they should not be, because ceiling light behaves differently than wall light. It rakes across the surface all day and finds every roller lap, every unsanded patch, and every spot where a second coat got skipped.

In older Philadelphia homes, ceilings are also where age shows first. Plaster cracks along the joists. Old water stains from a long-fixed leak bleed straight through fresh paint unless they are sealed with a stain-blocking primer, and a lot of homeowners find that out after two coats of flat white.

We repair the ceiling first, spot prime the stains properly, and use a flat finish, because anything with sheen on a ceiling advertises every imperfection in the plane.

Trim work is where a paint job either looks professional or does not, and it is the slowest part of an interior.

Old trim in this market is usually oil-based and has been painted over several times, so it needs to be cleaned, sanded, deglossed, and primed with a bonding primer before a waterborne finish will hold. Skipping that is why repainted trim ends up soft enough to dent with a fingernail or peels off in strips when tape comes up.

Baseboards get caulked to the wall so the line reads clean. Doors get taken down and done properly where it makes sense, including edges and tops. Front door painting we handle as its own small job, inside face and outside face, since it is the first thing anybody sees.

Sheen matters more in a hundred year old house than in a new build, because sheen is what makes an imperfect wall look imperfect.

Flat and matte hide the most, which is why they belong on ceilings and on older walls that have been patched and skimmed. Eggshell is the usual choice for living areas, enough washability without turning every ripple into a highlight. Satin and semi-gloss belong on trim, doors, kitchens, and bathrooms where the surface takes abuse and moisture.

The general rule in a rowhome: the older and more repaired the wall, the flatter you want to go. Ed will make the recommendation on site once he has seen how the light hits the room.

New construction interior painting is a different animal from repainting. The surfaces are raw, the schedule is coordinated with other trades, and the drywall finish level in front of you determines how much work has to happen before priming.

We do new construction and unoccupied units, including rental turnovers where the timeline is tight and the unit has to be ready for a lease date. Working empty is faster and cheaper for the customer, so if the house is going to be vacant anyway, that is the window to use.

Interior work runs year round, but Philadelphia weather still gets a vote.

Summer humidity slows dry and recoat times, which is why a job that should take three days sometimes takes four in August. Winter is easier on cure times but means less ventilation, so we plan the sequence around it. Sanding produces dust regardless of season, which is why sealing off the rooms we are not in matters.

A single room typically runs one to two days. A full first floor runs three to five. A whole-house interior with trim runs one to two weeks depending on size and how much repair the walls need.

Price comes down to three things: how much surface there is, how much repair it needs before paint, and whether trim is included.

Walls and ceilings only, in good condition, is the low end. Add trim and doors and the labor roughly doubles, because trim is slow and detailed. Add wall repair, wallpaper removal, or skim coating and it moves again, which is why that work has its own page.

Ed gives you a written estimate that separates the prep from the paint so you can see what you are actually paying for. Free, and nobody chases you afterward.