Painting, Drywall & Remodeling in Hinsdale, IL

Hinsdale is a high-finish town, and that is the honest shape of the work here. It has a large historic district of substantial older houses — Victorians, Queen Annes, Tudors and center-hall colonials with elaborate exterior woodwork — sitting alongside a lot of very large new construction on rebuilt lots. In both cases the client is usually looking at the work closely, from a few inches away, in good light.

On the older homes that means plaster. Plaster over lath fails on a line rather than at a dent, and it comes loose from the lath in sheets, so a repair that is screwed back tight and properly skimmed outlasts one that is simply filled and sanded. It also means exterior detail: deep trim profiles, porch ceilings, brackets and dentil work where scraping, caulking and priming is the majority of the labor and the paint is the last short step. We price that prep explicitly rather than averaging it across the house, because it is the part that determines whether the finish lasts two winters or ten.

On the new builds the challenge is flatness. Long walls, double-height entries and stair runs with a fixture raking light down them will reveal a joint that was coated three times instead of four. We sand with a light held along the wall rather than trusting a look from the doorway, and if a wall needs more finishing work than a standard smooth level to look right under its own lighting, we will say so at the estimate instead of after the first coat of paint.