Service
Interior painting
Plaster repair, skim coat and a spray finish. The prep is the job.
- Sample range
- $3.50 to $9.00 per square foot of floor area
- Time on site
- 4 days to 3 weeks
What we are actually solving
Most of the houses we paint have plaster walls with a hundred years of settlement cracks, nail pops, and at least three previous paint jobs that were rolled straight over failing surfaces. Painting over that gets you six months. Repairing it gets you fifteen years.
We cut out and re-bed cracks, skim coat where the texture will not hide a patch, prime with the right primer for the substrate, and spray-and-backroll ceilings and trim for a finish you cannot get with a roller alone.
Typical crew: Painting lead plus two, plasterer on repair-heavy homes
Line by line
What is included
This is the scope you would see in your proposal, written the way we write it rather than the way a brochure does.
Surface repair
Cracks cut out and taped, nail pops set and patched, loose plaster re-keyed or cut back to sound material.
Skim coating
Full or partial skim where patching would read through the sheen, sanded flat and dust vacuumed.
Lead-safe practices
RRP certified crew and containment on any home built before 1978 where we disturb painted surfaces.
Primer matched to substrate
Stain-blocking on water marks and knots, bonding primer on glossy trim, drywall primer on new board.
Two finish coats
Sprayed and backrolled on ceilings, cut and rolled on walls, sprayed on trim and doors for a factory-flat finish.
Protection and cleanup
Floors and furniture masked, hardware removed and bagged, and a walkthrough with a light before we load out.
Why it matters
Three things that change the outcome
Repair, then paint
We price the plaster repair honestly rather than burying it in a low square-foot rate.
Lead-safe certified
EPA RRP practices on every pre-1978 home, documented in your project file.
Sprayed trim and doors
Doors come off, get sprayed flat and go back on. No brush marks in the raking light.
- 01
Phone call
15 minutes, no visit yet
- 02
Site visit
About an hour, free
- 03
Design and selections
Paid agreement, credited back
- 04
Fixed-price proposal
Line-item scope, no vague lumps
- 05
Permits and pre-construction
The part nobody photographs
- 06
Construction
Weekly meetings, daily photos
- 07
Punch list and follow-up
Be picky, that is the point
Where the money goes
What moves the price on this work
Compare these against any other bid you are holding. If a line is missing from one of them, the prices are not comparable.
- How much plaster repair and skim coating the walls need
- Ceiling height and whether staging is required
- Number of doors, windows and how much trim gets sprayed
- Color changes that require an extra coat, especially deep reds and blues
- Occupied versus empty home
- Lead-safe containment on pre-1978 houses
Interior painting questions
Something not covered here? Call us, it is a two minute answer most of the time.
All questionsNo. We work room by room, seal the work area and clean up at the end of each day. For whole-house jobs in an empty house we can move much faster, which usually saves you money.
We can, and sometimes it is the right call when removal would destroy the plaster underneath. More often removal plus a skim coat is the better long-term answer, and we will tell you which one your walls need.
Matte or eggshell on walls, flat on ceilings, satin or semi-gloss on trim and doors. In high-traffic halls and kids' rooms we push toward a washable matte, which has improved a great deal in the last few years.
Modern low-VOC waterborne paint is largely odour-free within a day. We ventilate as we go and schedule bedrooms so you are not sleeping in a room painted that afternoon.
Often booked together
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Subfloor prep is 70% of a floor that stays flat. That is where we spend the time.
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The room your whole house runs through, rebuilt around how you actually cook.
Read moreFree estimate
Ready to price your interior painting
A free site visit, measurements and photographs, then a written ballpark range within three business days.
742 projects since 2009 · 3 year workmanship warranty · Licensed, bonded and lead-safe certified (sample figures)