House Painters in Arlington, VA

Ashton Heights was platted in 1921 and is full of bungalow, craftsman and colonial revival houses from before 1950. Maywood is older still, with Queen Anne detailing, wraparound porches and dormers. Lyon Park, Lyon Village, Cherrydale and Waverly Hills run to the same era.

These houses have wood that modern houses do not: porch columns, balustrades, bracket details, deep eave returns, tongue-and-groove porch ceilings, wood windows with real glazing putty, and clapboard or wood shingle siding under decades of paint.

Prep is the entire job. The paint history goes back a century and the lower layers are brittle. We hand scrape to sound edges, feather the transitions so the finished wall is not a relief map, and prime with a bonding primer where the underlying coat is chalky or was originally oil.

Porch floors are their own problem. A tongue-and-groove porch deck takes rain blowing in sideways and foot traffic, so a general house paint fails on it fast. Those need a porch and floor enamel and, when it is bare, a coat worked into the end grain where the boards meet.

Wood windows we treat as carpentry as much as paint. Dried glazing putty falls out, water sits in the sash rail, and the bottom rail goes soft. We reglaze and repair rather than telling you the only answer is replacement windows.

The other big slice of Arlington is postwar brick. Capes, ramblers and small colonials from the 1940s and 50s across Arlington Forest, Bluemont, Westover and the 22205 and 22207 streets, plus the brick colonial revival townhouses of Fairlington.

On an unpainted brick house, the painting job is trim work: fascia, soffit, rake, window casing, shutters, the porch ceiling, the garage door and the front door. It is a smaller and cheaper project than people expect and it is what keeps the house looking cared for. Soffits are where we find rot, because a clogged gutter on a shallow eave backs water straight into the soffit board.

Then there is the question everyone asks: should I paint the brick? It is a permanent decision. Painted brick cannot practically be returned to bare. If you do it, the wall has to be washed and fully dry, efflorescence removed, mortar repointed where it has failed, primed with a masonry primer and coated with a breathable masonry product. A vapor-tight film on a wall that wicks moisture will blister. Limewash is the softer alternative, since it soaks in and weathers instead of peeling.

We will do it properly if you want it. We will also tell you when we think the brick you have is better left alone.

Anything in Arlington built before roughly 1955 is likely to have plaster over wood or metal lath rather than drywall, and it behaves differently.

Plaster cracks along predictable lines: over door and window heads, at ceiling-wall junctions, radiating from corners. A hairline crack filled with lightweight compound and painted over will come back, because the crack is moving. We cut it out to a V, fill with a setting-type compound, tape where the crack is structural rather than cosmetic, then skim and sand.

Plaster also goes hollow. If a section has separated from the lath it sounds drummy when you tap it, and painting a drummy section is pointless because it will eventually let go. Those areas get re-secured or cut out and patched.

The finish shows everything. Old plaster walls are rarely flat, and a satin or eggshell across a long wall lit by a side window will pick up every wave. On these houses we usually recommend a matte or flat with good scrub resistance on walls, and keep the sheen for trim and doors.

We also do popcorn ceiling removal, wallpaper removal, drywall and plaster repair, and crown molding installation, all with the same crew that paints.

Arlington kitchens are often small. That is exactly why cabinet refinishing pays off here: in a compact room, the cabinets are most of what you see, so changing their color changes the room more than any wall color could.

Doors and drawer fronts come off, get labelled, and are cleaned, degreased, sanded and sprayed off site. Boxes and face frames are finished in place with the kitchen sealed off from the rest of the house. Hardware is reused or upgraded, with holes plugged and re-drilled if the spacing changes.

Two Arlington-specific notes. In a small kitchen, a light cabinet color genuinely opens the room, and taking uppers to the same color as the ceiling makes the ceiling read higher. And in a house where the kitchen is the only route to the back door, we sequence the work so you are not locked out of your own yard for a week.

Bathroom vanities and built-in bookcases flanking the fireplace, which nearly every Arlington bungalow has, get refinished on the same visit.

Deck work in Arlington is different from the county to the west. Lots are small, so instead of a big raised deck off the kitchen you usually have a modest rear deck, a screened porch, a front porch, a set of steps and a railing.

Front porch floors and steps take the most abuse and want a porch and floor enamel rather than wall paint. Screened porches need masking discipline so nothing lands on the screen, and the ceiling, beams and railings often want three different products.

A lot of these houses also have iron: railings, columns, basement window grilles, and the wrought iron porch supports that came standard on 1950s brick capes. Iron rusts from the inside of the joint outward. Painting over active rust just hides it. Those need the loose scale taken back, a rust-converting or rust-inhibitive primer, and then a topcoat.

Where you do have a rear deck, we clean, brighten and dry it properly before staining. We also work with Ipe and Cumaru, which turn up on the newer Arlington rebuilds and need a hardwood-specific penetrating oil rather than any conventional deck stain.

A large share of Arlington households are in attached or multi-family housing: the garden apartment complexes that Westover was built around in the 1940s, the mid-rise and high-rise buildings through Ballston, Clarendon, Rosslyn and Pentagon City, and the converted condominium units across the county.

Working in those buildings means paperwork and rules. We can provide a certificate of insurance to a management company. We work within permitted hours, reserve the service elevator when required, and protect corridors and lobby flooring on the way in and out.

The work itself is usually a full unit repaint between tenants or before listing, popcorn ceiling removal, wallpaper removal, or cabinet refinishing in a kitchen too small to justify gutting. Because we have no job minimum, a one-bedroom unit is a job we will genuinely take.

In Fairlington and similar older attached communities, the association typically controls exterior appearance, so confirm what is yours before booking exterior work. Interiors are your own.

Arlington has both National Register districts and local historic districts, and they are not the same thing.

A National Register listing, which covers Ashton Heights, Westover and others, is largely honorific. It does not stop you painting your house whatever you like.

A local historic district, Maywood being the best-known example, does involve county review through a certificate of appropriateness for exterior changes. Here is the useful part: Arlington County lists paint colors among the exceptions to the certificate requirement, along with routine maintenance and repairs using the same materials. So repainting your Maywood house a new color is generally not the obstacle people assume it is. Replacing materials with something different is a separate matter, so if the job involves swapping siding or trim rather than repainting it, check with county staff before you start.

Either way we will work to whatever your district or association expects, and we will brush out real sample boards on the actual wall so you are judging the color in Arlington light rather than off a chip in a store.