Interior Painting

Inside paint wears out quietly. Scuffs pile up along the hallway, the white trim turns a shade of cream, and the kitchen wall behind the stove never quite wipes clean anymore. In an older home near downtown Napa, you might also have hairline cracks running out from the door frames and window openings, some of them left over from the 2014 earthquake. In newer houses in American Canyon, it's more often nail pops, dented corners and the builder's flat paint that marks every time someone leans on it.

This page covers how to tell when touch-ups won't do anymore, how we handle plaster and drywall differently, what a typical day looks like with our crew inside your home, and how we deal with vaulted ceilings and tall stairwells. Most of the difference between a so-so paint job and a clean one comes from the repairs and masking done before the first coat. If you're also thinking about the kitchen, kitchen cabinet painting can change the whole room without the cost of a remodel.

Signs a Room Needs More Than a Touch-Up

Touch-ups work when the paint is fairly new and the color hasn't shifted. After a few years, a patch of fresh paint shows up as a brighter square on the wall, especially in flat or eggshell finishes. That's usually the first sign a room is due. Others are easier to see: marks that won't wash off, peeling in the bathroom where steam collects, yellowed trim and doors, and cracks that keep coming back in the same spots. Grease on kitchen walls is another one. It looks like a faint shine near the stove, and paint won't stick to it until it's been scrubbed off with a degreaser. Water stains on a ceiling need extra attention too. They mean there was a leak, and the leak has to be fixed before we paint, or the stain comes right back. Kids' rooms, entryways and hallways tend to need paint sooner than formal rooms, since they get the most traffic and the most hands on the walls.

Plaster Walls vs. Drywall

Older homes in the valley often have plaster over wood lath, and it behaves differently from the drywall in newer houses. Plaster is hard and dense, and it cracks as the house settles or shakes. A lot of homes in Napa still carry cracks from the 2014 South Napa earthquake that were painted over once and came back. Patching plaster right means opening the crack slightly, reinforcing it with mesh tape, and filling it with a setting-type compound that cures hard, then sanding and priming the patch so it doesn't flash through the paint. Drywall is softer. Its usual problems are nail pops, cracked tape at the seams, and dents. We reset the fasteners, retape where needed, skim and sand. On either surface, the patches get primed before color, so the finish has the same sheen from one end of the wall to the other.

Room by Room: How We Work Inside

We set up in one part of the house and leave the other rooms alone, so you can keep living there while we work. Furniture gets pushed together in the center and covered, floors get drop cloths taped at the edges, and we unscrew the cover plates on every outlet and switch. Then the repairs: patching, caulking gaps along trim, and sanding so everything is smooth. Primer goes on patches, stains and any bare spots. We work from the top down: ceilings, walls, and last the trim and doors, usually with two finish coats on each. We cut the edges by hand along the ceiling line and trim, so you get straight lines without tape bleeding under. Before leaving each evening, the crew tidies the work area, puts back what it can, and tells you what's planned for tomorrow. When the last room is done, we go through the house together and fix anything that catches your eye.

Vaulted Ceilings, Stairwells and Tall Walls

A lot of homes in the valley have vaulted living rooms, two-story entries or open stairwells, and those are the spots most people don't want to tackle themselves. They need more than a tall ladder. We use extension planks, ladder levelers and, on the biggest spaces, rolling scaffolding, so the crew can work safely at the top of the wall without leaning off a ladder. Stairwells take careful setup, since the floor below is uneven and the steps have to stay passable for the family. We pad the treads and keep a clear path to the top. High ceilings also show roller marks more than flat ones do, because light hits them at a sharp angle from the windows. We roll them in long, even passes, keeping a wet edge, so the finish looks uniform from below. If you have a skylight or clerestory windows, we check how the light falls on the ceiling before choosing the sheen.

When the work moves outside, see how we handle exterior house painting on siding, stucco and trim.