Interior Painting in Arlington, VA

An old plaster wall is not flat and was never meant to be. It has hand-floated waves, a belly between studs and a hundred small repairs from decades of picture hooks, radiator pipes and telephone wire.

Sheen decides whether you see any of it. Higher sheen throws light sideways and turns every wave into a shadow. In a pre-war Arlington living room with a side window running the length of one wall, an eggshell will show you things you did not know were there.

So here we steer people to a matte or flat with real scrub resistance on walls, and keep sheen where it earns its keep: semi-gloss on trim, doors and casing, satin in a kitchen or mudroom. That is a different recommendation than we would make in a ten-year-old house, and it is driven entirely by what the wall is.

If you want a wall genuinely flat rather than forgiving, it can be skim coated first. That is a real job and we price it as one.

A large share of Arlington households are in attached or multi-family housing: the garden apartment blocks around Westover, the towers through Ballston, Clarendon, Rosslyn and Pentagon City, and converted condominiums between them.

Before a drop cloth goes down we deal with the building:

• A certificate of insurance issued to the association and the management company, worded the way they require it.
• The service elevator reserved for the load in and the load out, which in most buildings means a booked window rather than turning up.
• Permitted work hours, which rule out early starts and usually rule out Sunday entirely.
• Corridor, lobby and elevator cab protection, because a drip in a common area is the association's problem and then yours.

We have no job minimum, so a one-bedroom repaint before a listing is work we take. Most of it is a full unit, popcorn removal or wallpaper removal, scheduled tight because keys often change hands on a fixed date.

In a lot of the newer Arlington towers the glazing is fixed. There is no sash to throw open and the building's air handling is not yours to control. That changes how we paint the place.

We use low and zero VOC lines from Sherwin-Williams and Benjamin Moore anyway, and in a sealed unit we pick the line specifically for odor rather than out of habit. We run air movers toward the door where the building allows the entry cracked and protected, and we stage the rooms so you are not sleeping next to what we finished that afternoon.

It stretches the schedule slightly. A room with no air exchange takes longer between coats than the same room with a window open, and we would rather add half a day than stack a coat onto paint that has not released its moisture.

Nearly every Arlington bungalow has a pair of built-in bookcases flanking the fireplace, and most of the pre-war houses still carry picture rail, deep baseboard with a cap, and casing with a profile you cannot buy.

The bookcases get skipped and then they show. Shelves out and labeled, the carcass cut and brushed, shelves finished flat and returned in order. Painting around them in place is why they look tired in an otherwise fresh room.

Old trim usually has an oil finish somewhere in its history and fresh latex has nothing to grip on it. It gets deglossed, sanded and given a bonding primer before any enamel, or it peels in sheets the first time a vacuum drags along the base. Doors here are solid, heavy and often painted shut at the stop. We free them, ease where they bind, and finish them so they still close on the latch.

Interior work still has to arrive. In Ashton Heights, Lyon Park or Cherrydale there is often no driveway, street parking is permit-controlled and your front walk is a few strides long.

We plan that before the first morning rather than improvising in front of your neighbors. Where the truck sits is settled in advance, materials come in by the day instead of stacking in your hall, and the path from door to work is run and taped before anything heavy moves along it.

Same four people every day, Fred among them, checking in before the crew leaves. Virginia contractor license 2705098145, bonded and insured. Ten percent off for veterans and anyone 65 or over. Call 703-869-0593.