Interior painting and plaster repair for prewar apartments

Painting a prewar apartment is mostly what happens before the paint: old plaster, hairline cracks, and trim that has been coated many times over.

Put paint straight onto those walls and you can see every one of them by the time it dries. The difference between a paint job that looks good for a week and one that looks good for years is almost entirely in the preparation.

Call (929) 695-6242 to talk about painting.

Plaster and drywall repair

The walls in these buildings are plaster over masonry or lath, not modern board, and they behave differently. They crack in predictable places, around door heads, at ceiling junctions and where the building has settled. They also come loose from the backing in patches, which is what people are hearing when a wall sounds hollow.

We cut out what has failed rather than filling over it, key the repair into sound plaster, and build it back level so the repair does not read as a shadow under the finished paint. Where a wall has been patched with the wrong material over the years, it usually has to come off before anything sensible can go on.

On trim, decades of coats round over the detail that made the trim worth having. Where that has happened we take it back enough for the profile to come through again before repainting.

How a painting job runs

1. Protect. Floors covered, furniture moved to the center and wrapped, fittings taken off rather than painted around.
2. Prepare. Cracks cut out and repaired, loose material removed, holes filled, surfaces sanded and dust removed.
3. Prime. Repairs and bare areas primed so they do not flash through the finish, and stains sealed so they stay sealed.
4. Paint. Ceilings, then walls, then trim, in the number of coats the color change actually needs.
5. Reinstate and clean. Fittings back on, furniture back, and the apartment left usable at the end of each day.

Working around you, and around the building

Most painting happens with people still living there, so we work room by room and agree the order with you before we start. You keep a usable apartment throughout, and each day ends with the rooms you are living in clean.

New York City allows construction between 7am and 6pm on weekdays, with any other time needing authorization from the city, and buildings often set narrower hours again in the alteration agreement. Painting itself is quiet. Preparation is not, so we put the noisy stages inside the hours we are actually allowed and work the quiet ones around them.

If your building has to approve the work before it starts and the answer comes back no, or comes back with conditions, we would rather find that out during the estimate than after materials are ordered. We ask what your building requires as part of pricing the job.

When painting is the whole job, and when it is not

Fresh paint on sound walls transforms an apartment for a fraction of what any other work costs. It is often the right answer on its own.

It is not the answer when the surface underneath is failing, when there is damp reaching the plaster, or when the layout is what is actually wrong with the apartment. If we see that on the visit we will tell you, and point you at the renovation work instead.

What decides the price

• The condition of the walls. This is the main one. An apartment needing real plaster repair is a different job from one needing two coats.
• The trim. Paneled doors, deep moldings and window casings take far longer than flat walls.
• Ceiling height. Prewar ceilings are tall, which means staging and more surface than the floor area suggests.
• Color change. Going dark to light, or covering a strong color, adds coats.
• Whether you are living there. Working room by room around an occupied apartment takes longer than working through an empty one.

Questions about painting