A free walkthrough
We measure and write the scope before anyone quotes.
Cook County, Chicago service area
House painters in Chicago, IL.
The city we work in most is the one on the lake side of the river: Lincoln Park rowhouses and greystones, Gold Coast and Streeterville high rises, and the loft conversions of River North, the West Loop and Printers Row.
Vetted, background-checked & fully insured
Vetted and insured
Background-checked painters, fully insured, supervised.
A date that holds
We start when we said, and tell you early if weather moves it.
Clean every evening
Floors covered, tools packed, the room usable again.
What this town asks for
Services in Chicago.
What Chicago homes ask for most, and what the housing stock here tends to need.
Work near here
Projects in and near Chicago.
The housing stock here
Painting homes in Chicago.
Downtown and the near North and West Sides are not the rest of Chicago, and the difference decides almost everything about a painting job here.
Start with the buildings. A high rise on Lake Shore Drive, a converted timber warehouse on West Fulton and a rehabbed three flat in Noble Square are three different jobs that share one trait: the work happens inside, and the building has opinions about it. Certificates of insurance naming the association. Freight elevator slots booked days ahead. Work hours that stop at five and never start on a Sunday. None of that is painting, and all of it decides whether a start date holds. We deal with the management office directly rather than handing you a form and hoping.
Loft conversions have their own physics. Ceilings sit at twelve to fourteen feet, so the equipment is a lift or a rolling tower, and the lift has to get through your freight elevator before it gets to your ceiling. Exposed duct, conduit and sprinkler pipe either disappear into the ceiling color or become a feature, and that is a decision to make before anything is masked rather than after. Original common brick is the other one people rush: it is soft, it drinks paint, and getting paint back out of it later is a project of its own.
The vintage stock asks a different question. Lincoln Park greystones and the rowhouses off Astor and Dearborn carry original millwork, deep window casings, and plaster that cracks along its own lines rather than in the neat seams drywall gives you. Plaster takes a skim that is fed in rather than filled, and a wall painted before it has settled shows the repair by spring. Stained trim is the fork in the road: clear finishes can be cleaned and recoated, painted trim almost never goes back, and on a hundred year old profile the difference is the detail that makes the room worth having.
Very little of this is exterior work. Nobody repaints a thirty story building in Streeterville, and on a rowhouse the outside is front door, window trim, railings and the rear deck rather than acres of siding. That is fine. It means what we quote downtown is interior work priced honestly, with the access and building logistics in the number instead of discovered in week two.
Access is the last thing and the one most often waved away. There is no driveway to stage from and no street to leave a van on. It is a loading dock with a booking, or a permitted loading zone, or an early start before the block fills. We plan it before the first morning, because on a downtown job the day you lose is the day you spent finding somewhere to park.
Can you work in a downtown condo or loft building?
Yes, and most of our city work is exactly that. We handle the association or property manager directly: the certificate of insurance naming the building, the freight elevator and loading dock booking, and the hours your building allows work, which downtown is often weekdays only. Getting that paperwork in early is the difference between starting on the date we promised and losing a week to a management office.
Should exposed brick in a loft be painted or left alone?
It depends on the brick, and it is close to permanent either way. Original common brick in a warehouse conversion is soft and porous, and paint sits in it rather than on it, so taking it back off later means chemicals and a lot of them. We will tell you when brick is better cleaned and sealed than coated, and when a single wall painted out is the right call for a room that has four of them.
How do you paint a loft ceiling at thirteen or fourteen feet?
With a lift or rolling scaffold rather than a ladder, which is a schedule question before it is a price one: the lift has to fit the freight elevator and the door. Exposed spiral duct, conduit and sprinkler pipe are usually sprayed to disappear into the ceiling color, and everything below them gets masked properly because overspray at that height travels.
What happens to the original woodwork in a Lincoln Park greystone?
We ask what you want it to be before we quote it. Stained original trim, doors and stair parts can be cleaned, repaired and recoated in a clear finish, or painted out, and painting is one direction only. Where trim has already been painted badly over a century, the honest answer is usually strip the profiles back rather than add another coat that buries the detail that makes the room.
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Local homes. Local painters.
Nearby areas we serve.
Chicago sits in our Chicago service area. We cover these towns around it too.
A fresh start, with Bold Coat
Planning a paint project in Chicago?
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