Where We Paint in Northern Virginia

This region gives you humid summers, freeze and thaw cycles from December through February, and a spring that arrives at slightly different times depending on how sheltered your street is.

What that does to a house is predictable. South and west elevations lose their finish first because they take the most sun. North elevations grow mildew because they stay damp. Horizontal surfaces, meaning decks, railing caps, window sills and porch floors, fail before anything vertical, because water sits on them. Anywhere two materials meet, the joint opens as the seasons move it.

The result is that most houses here need exterior attention every seven to ten years, decks every two to three, and south facing trim more often than the rest of the house. If you walk the perimeter once each spring and look at those specific places, you will catch problems while they are still paint problems rather than carpentry problems.

A large share of the houses out here sit inside an association with something to say about exterior color. Reston, Burke Centre, Kingstowne, Franklin Farm and dozens of smaller neighborhoods all have approval processes, and old town Alexandria has a genuine historic review board with real authority.

Rules vary, but the pattern is consistent. Exterior color changes need approval. Repainting in the same color usually does not, though some associations still want to be told. Approval typically takes anywhere from two weeks to two months depending on how often the committee sits.

We are not your association and we cannot approve anything, but we have been through the process enough times to tell you what a committee normally wants: the color name, the brand, the manufacturer code, and often a sample. If you are changing color, start that application before you book the work, not after. The dates you want are the ones that get lost while paperwork sits with a committee.

The truck arrives between seven thirty and eight and it is the same crew each morning. If your street has permit parking or a narrow approach, tell us at the estimate and we will plan around it rather than discovering it on day one.

Setup goes down before anything is opened: drop cloths inside, plastic on the shrubs and windows outside, and furniture moved and covered. Kids and pets get a word before we start about which doors will be open and when.

On exteriors we work around your neighbors. Power washing starts at a civilized hour, not at seven. Ladders come down at the end of each day rather than being left leaning against a house all week. Trash leaves with us daily instead of piling up in your driveway.

Every day ends with the site tidy, and the last day ends with the walk around. That routine does not change from town to town.

The fourteen pages here are the places we work most. They are not a fence.

If you are just outside, in Chantilly, Centreville, Dunn Loring, Merrifield, Clifton, Lorton or over toward Ashburn, call and ask. Whether we take it usually comes down to the size of the job and what else is on the calendar that week. A full exterior is worth a longer drive. Repainting one bathroom probably is not, and we would rather tell you that on the phone than waste your afternoon.

We do cross into Maryland or the District only rarely, and only for existing customers. Nearly all of our work is Fairfax County, Arlington County and the City of Alexandria.

One thing worth saying about the edges of the map. The drive time that matters is not the mileage, it is the traffic between our shop and your street at seven in the morning. Vienna to Great Falls is a short hop on a map and an easy run in practice. Vienna to somewhere the same distance the other side of the Beltway can be twice the clock time in rush hour. That is why the list looks lopsided: it follows the roads rather than a circle drawn with a compass.

If you are on the far side of one of those bottlenecks and the job is big enough to be worth a full day on site, we will still come. What we will not do is take a small job an hour away, start late, leave early, and charge you for the difference. Ask on the phone and you will get a straight answer either way, usually in the first minute of the call.

Search for a painter and you will find companies that list every town in the state. Some of them are real businesses running crews out of a warehouse an hour away. Some are lead brokers who will sell your phone number to whoever pays.

The test is simple and worth applying to us as much as to anybody else. Ask where the shop is. Ask who is going to be at your house, and whether it is the same people every day. Ask whether the person doing the estimate will be there while the work happens. Ask for the license number and check it against the Virginia DPOR record.

Ours is Class A license 2705098145, the shop is in Vienna, the crew is four people who have been here for years, and the owner walks every estimate. That is checkable, which is the point.