Painting Contractor in Northern Virginia Since 2002
Fred General Painting LLC is a small crew run by Fredy Vargas out of Vienna. We paint the inside and outside of houses across Fairfax and Arlington counties, and Fred is on the job himself. Licensed, bonded and insured. Call 703-869-0593 for a free estimate.
24 years in Northern Virginia · 5.0 on Google · 93 five‑star reviews on Thumbtack · Top Pro 2021–2025 · Licensed, bonded, insured
Get a ballpark number in about twenty seconds.
Most people want a rough idea before they pick up the phone. This tool gives you a ballpark, honestly, with no salesman attached and nothing to fill in. It is not a quote: when you want a real number, Fred measures the house and puts it in writing at no charge.
Fredy Vargas started this company in 2002. That makes 2026 our twenty-fourth year painting houses in Northern Virginia. In that time the work has stayed the same size on purpose. Fred and four employees. No sales department, no rotating subcontractors, no crew you meet for the first time on the morning they start.
Fred walks the house himself before the estimate. He is usually there while the work runs. He is the person who answers the phone at 703-869-0593, and he is the person who comes back if a corner needs another pass six months later. Customers notice that, and it is most of the reason we are still here after twenty-four years without ever running an ad campaign.
We are licensed in Virginia under contractor license 2705098145, and we carry bonding and insurance. Our shop address is 8040 Trevor Place in Vienna, so the houses we paint are mostly a fifteen or twenty minute drive from where the ladders live.
Get a rough price before you call
Rough numbers in a few taps. Nothing gets sent anywhere until you decide to send it.
This is a ballpark from jobs like yours, not a quote. Fred measures the actual house and gives you a real number in writing, free.
Get a real number →Real jobs, real houses, around here.
Every photo on this site is one of ours. Nothing was bought from a stock library.
People keep saying the same three things.
He turns up when he said he would. He checks in every day. And the price he quoted is the price you pay.
Fredy painted our large five bedroom home including all closets and full three car garage over four weeks. Fredy and his crew were polite and respectful and left our home as clean as possible…
Ken W · GoogleWe are very satisfied with the exterior painting work. The job was completed in a timely manner with great attention to detail. Fred responded quickly, demonstrated professional knowledge, and provided friendly and helpful consultation…
BO K · GoogleFred shows up as he promises and will do his everything to make sure you are pleased before he finishes.
mikki freidkin · GoogleFive things, done properly.
Tap through them. Fred still runs the job himself, same crew, same start time, and he checks in with you every day it is happening.
Interior Painting
An interior job lives or dies on two things: how the room gets protected, and how the cut lines look at the ceiling. Everything else is paint on a roller.
We cover floors and carpet, move what needs moving and pad what stays, and mask the fixtures. Nail holes get filled, cracked seams get taped, glossy trim gets scuffed so the new coat has something to hold onto. Then we cut and roll, and we cut freehand with a brush rather than relying on tape to save us. Bare drywall and patched areas get primed first. Dark colors going light, or light going dark, get the coats they need instead of the coats we hoped they would need.
At the end of each day the room is broom clean and the path to it is clean too. One of our customers painted a five bedroom house with us over four weeks, closets and a three car garage included, and the thing he wrote about afterward was that his house was left as clean as possible every single day. That is the standard.
All about interior painting
Exterior Painting
Outside, prep is the whole job. Northern Virginia weather is hard on a paint film. Wet springs, humid summers, freeze and thaw all winter, and a south wall that bakes from noon until dinner.
We wash the house first, scrape and sand what has failed, and spot prime every bare spot before topcoat goes anywhere near it. Caulk joints that have opened get cut out and refilled. Rotten trim gets replaced with new wood, not filled with putty and painted over so it looks fine for a season. We back-prime the replacement boards.
We watch dew point and rain, not just the daytime high. A coat that goes on at four in the afternoon in October may still be soft when the temperature drops at seven. Getting that timing right is the difference between a finish that lasts and one that peels off a north-facing wall in three years.
All about exterior paintingCabinet Refinishing
Refinishing cabinets is the cheapest large change you can make to a kitchen, and the fastest way to a bad result if the prep is rushed. Kitchen cabinet doors carry cooking grease, hand oil and old wax. Paint does not stick to any of that.
We take the doors and drawer fronts off and label them, degrease everything, sand the surfaces, and prime with a bonding primer chosen for the substrate. Oak grain gets filled if you want it smooth. Then the finish coats go on thin and even so the doors close without sticking and the surface stands up to fingernails and dish towels.
Cabinets need cure time, not just dry time. We tell you when to put the doors back to work and how to treat them for the first few weeks, because a finish that is handled hard on day two never recovers.
All about cabinet refinishing
Deck Refinishing
We clean, repair and re-stain decks, and we do a lot of them. A deck in this area takes sun on the boards and moisture from below, and the fasteners and joists usually tell you more about its health than the surface does.
One customer had a twenty-plus year old deck with rotten boards sitting under a hot tub. We cleaned it, replaced the bad wood, and re-stained the whole thing to match the existing solid stain so the repair did not read as a patch. He hired us again later. That is the normal shape of a deck job for us: clean it, fix what is soft, match what is there.
Power washing is part of most exterior work and we also do it on its own for siding, driveways, walkways, patios and fences. We use the pressure the surface can take. Cedar, painted wood and vinyl each want something different, and blasting all three the same way is how people end up with furred siding and stripped mortar.
All about deck refinishing
Power Washing
Older houses here have plaster walls, settled drywall seams, popcorn ceilings from the seventies, wallpaper glued over unprimed drywall, and stucco that has cracked at the corners. Painting over any of that just makes a shinier version of the same problem.
We do the carpentry and wood rot repair, the drywall and plaster patching, the popcorn removal, the crown molding, the wallpaper removal and hanging, and the stucco repair ourselves. It keeps one person accountable for how the finished wall looks. It also keeps the schedule honest, because the repair and the paint are on the same calendar instead of waiting on somebody else's opening.
Concrete staining, garage floor epoxy and pool painting round out the list. Those are specialty coatings with real temperature and moisture requirements, and we would rather tell you the slab is not ready than put a coating on it that lifts in a year.
All about power washing
Cabinet Refinishing
Doors come off and get sprayed. Days, not weeks, and a fraction of replacing them.
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Deck Refinishing
Strip, sand, reseal. Hardwoods too, including Ipe and Cumaru.
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Exterior Painting
Wash, scrape, caulk, prime and two coats. We follow the shade around the house.
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Interior Painting
Walls, ceilings, trim and doors. We move the furniture and put it back where it was.
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Power Washing
Siding, decks, fences and walkways. Pressure matched to the surface.
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From the first call to two years later.
Tap along the timeline. There are no surprises anywhere on it, which is the point.
Fred comes and looks at it
Not a salesman and not a tablet with a price generator on it. Fred walks the job with you, measures, presses on the trim where water sits, and finds out what is under the last coat. It takes about forty minutes on an average house and it costs nothing.
A written price, broken into parts
Prep, materials, labor by area, and any repairs on their own line so you can see exactly what the rot is costing you rather than having it buried in one number. If you want to cut the scope, you can see precisely where.
You pick colors, we protect the house
Bring us a chip, a cabinet door or a photo of a wall you like and the store can match it in almost any brand. On the first morning drop cloths and plastic go down before a single can is opened, and furniture is moved and covered.
The same four people, and the owner on site
The truck arrives between seven thirty and eight. It is the same crew from the first morning to the last, so the man who patched the crack is the man who paints over it. Fred checks the work himself every day the job is running.
We walk it together with a roll of tape
In daylight, with you. Anything you mark gets fixed before the truck leaves. That is not a complaints process, it is just how the job finishes. Then the site is cleaned and the trash leaves with us.
If it fails, we come back
Workmanship is warranted for two years. If paint we applied peels or blisters on a surface we prepared, we put it right at no cost. Fred answers his own phone, including two years later.
Twenty minutes from the shop in Vienna.
We stay close on purpose. If your house is on this list we can usually come and look at it inside a week.
The rest of it, if you want it.
The paint we use
We buy Sherwin-Williams and Benjamin Moore. Both make excellent products and both make cheap ones, so the line matters as much as the brand. We match the product to the surface and to how the room gets used, and we will explain the choice rather than just handing you a can.
Kitchens, baths and mudrooms want something that scrubs. Trim and doors want a harder film. Ceilings want flat. Exterior wood, fiber cement, brick and stucco each want a different formulation. A customer who has used us across fourteen years said Fred always gives honest advice on the types and quality of paint to use, and that is the part of the conversation we like most.
We do not cut corners on the product to win a number on the estimate. If a cheaper line makes sense for a rental turnover, we will say so. If it does not, we will say that instead.
Discounts, hours and the details
Veterans get 10% off, and so does anybody 65 or older. Mention it when you call and it goes on the estimate.
Office hours are Monday through Friday, 8am to 5pm, with weekends by appointment. Fred is often on a ladder during the day, so if you get voicemail, leave one - the call comes back.
Fred General Painting LLC, 8040 Trevor Place, Vienna VA 22182. Virginia contractor license 2705098145. Licensed, bonded and insured. We do not set a minimum on the size of a job. A hall and a small bedroom is a real job to us, and we have taken plenty of them.
What we paint
Most weeks we are doing interiors, exteriors, cabinets or decks. But a painting job on an older Northern Virginia house rarely stops at paint, so we handle the repair work that shows up underneath it instead of sending you off to find a second contractor.
Where we work
We work out of Vienna and cover the towns around it. If you are close to this list and not on it, call anyway - we are usually not far.
Every service we offer
Every town we cover
More on this from Fred
- What Actually Drives the Cost of Painting a House in Northern VirginiaHomeowners want a number. What they usually need first is an understanding of why two honest painters can quote the…
- Painting Your Kitchen Cabinets vs Replacing ThemRefinishing is the cheaper path most of the time. But there are kitchens where it is the wrong answer, and…
- The Best Time of Year to Paint the Outside of a Virginia HomeLate spring and early fall are the sweet spots, but the reason has less to do with the daytime high…
The things people ask first
How long have you been painting in Northern Virginia?
Fredy Vargas founded Fred General Painting LLC in 2002, so 2026 is our twenty-fourth year. We have worked in and around Vienna the whole time.
Are you licensed and insured?
Yes. We hold Virginia contractor license 2705098145 and we are licensed, bonded and insured. We are also background checked through Thumbtack.
Is the estimate free?
Yes. Fred comes out, walks the property with you, measures, and gives you a written estimate with the scope spelled out. There is no charge and no obligation.
Will you take a job that is only one or two rooms?
Yes. There is no minimum job. We have painted single hallways and small bedrooms, and we have painted five bedroom houses over four weeks. Call and tell us what you have.
What paint brands do you use?
Sherwin-Williams and Benjamin Moore. We pick the specific line based on the surface and how the room gets used, and we will explain why before we buy anything.
Do you offer any discounts?
Yes - a 10% discount for veterans, and the same for anyone 65 or older. Let us know when you call so it is on the estimate from the start.
Will Fred be on my job or just at the estimate?
Fred is on the job. He runs the crew himself and checks in with customers as the work goes. That is a large part of why people hire us again years later.
What towns do you serve?
Vienna, Oakton, McLean, Great Falls, Arlington, Falls Church, Tysons, Fairfax, Burke, Reston, Herndon, Annandale, Alexandria and Springfield. If you are nearby, call and ask.
Tell Fred what needs painting.
Three questions and he calls you back, usually the same day. Ten percent off for veterans and anyone 65 or older.