Exterior Painting in Tysons, VA

Nearly every row here has a governing association with a set exterior palette, and it usually specifies more than the body. Trim color, door color, shutter color, sometimes which of those may differ from the next unit and sometimes not.

We confirm what your association allows before we quote a color rather than after, and we send the certificate of insurance where they want it on file.

The practical problem with a row is the edge. Your trim runs into your neighbor's trim at the party line, and if the two were coated in different years with different products, the join shows. Where we are doing one unit we find the break that makes the most sense, usually a downspout, a corner board or a change of plane, and we cut to it. Where two or three neighbors go together, the whole face reads as one building again, which is the point of the palette in the first place.

Forty years of row houses have taught us where to put the ladder first, and it is the same short list every time.

• Garage door jambs. The bottom six inches, sitting on a slab that holds water, hit by every wheel and every winter salt truck.
• Trim behind the gutter. Fascia end grain at a splice, where the gutter has been overflowing into the joint for years.
• Rear sills and the door threshold trim on the yard side, which is the elevation nobody looks at.
• The bottom rail of a fence or screen panel at the property line, in contact with a bed or a mulched strip.
• Deck ledger trim where a rear platform ties into the wall.

We cut that wood out and replace it as part of the painting job rather than sending you to find a carpenter. New stock is primed on all six sides, cut ends included, before it goes up.

There are still detached houses on the edges. Along the Route 7 side towards Pimmit Hills you get 1950s stock, small and low, some of it original and some replaced by much larger new builds on the same lots. The Old Courthouse side has seventies and eighties houses with newer infill among them.

Those two generations could not be less alike to paint. A 1950s house is painted wood trim on brick or aluminum, shallow eaves, everything close to the ground. A rebuild on the next lot is fiber cement and cellular PVC, where the field is fine and the whole job is at the sealant joints and the factory-cut ends.

Homeowners with the newer houses are frequently told they will never need to paint. The board holds up. The caulk at butt seams, window heads and inside corners does not, and once a joint opens the water is behind the board and out of sight.

Staging is the part of a Tysons exterior that surprises people. A row unit has a shared alley or a numbered space, not a driveway you can park a van and a compressor in. There is often no gate to the rear, so everything goes through the house, and the side yard is a four-foot gap between you and the next unit.

So we plan it before the first morning. Small ladders and standoffs rather than a long extension leaned across a neighbor's wall. Brushwork and back-rolling where a sprayer would put overspray on a car park twenty feet away. Drop protection over a shared walk that people are using while we work.

Overspray is the real risk, given what is parked and planted within a few feet of every wall. On a tight row we mask more than we would on an open lot, and that time is in the estimate.

A townhouse tucked in among towers gets strange light. Hard reflected afternoon sun bouncing off curtain wall and pale concrete onto one elevation, and deep shade on another that never sees direct sun at all.

The reflected side fades faster than the aspect alone would suggest, and it is where deep reds and blues lose their depth first. The shaded side holds color much longer but grows a green film every year.

So we put sample boards on the actual elevations and look at them at different hours. It also means touching up one wall years later will not match. When you repaint, you repaint the whole plane.

If your row has a management company, tell us who it is when you call. We get the certificate of insurance naming them over before the start date, confirm the hours they allow, and check whether anything on your list is a common element we would need their instruction on.

Fredy Vargas has run this company since 2002 and prices the job himself. Virginia contractor license 2705098145, licensed, bonded and insured. We are on Trevor Place in Vienna, a few minutes out Route 7. Ten percent off for veterans and for anyone 65 or over. Call 703-869-0593.