Whole-Home Interior Repaint — Annabelle Lane, Warwick

What the job involved

This was a pre-move-in repaint, which is the ideal way to do a whole-home interior: empty house, no furniture to work around, and every room accessible at once. The owners wanted to take a dated, uneven interior back to a single clean warm-white envelope so their own furnishings and art would carry the color instead of the walls.

The defining feature of the house — and the part most quotes get wrong — is the two-story great room with its full-height fireplace wall. Painting that properly means staging, not ladders leaned against a wall, and it means cutting a clean line where a 20-foot wall meets the ceiling with nothing to brace against. It's slow and it's the single most visible surface in the house.

Prep took the first stretch of the job: nail pops reset through the upstairs hallway and bedrooms, hairline cracks over doorways cut open, taped and feathered rather than filled, and spot-priming everywhere the old finish had been patched. The stairwell and entry hall got particular attention because raking light through the front windows shows every flaw in that space at certain times of day.

Trim, casing, baseboard and every interior door were scuff-sanded, bonded and finished in a crisp semi-gloss white, which is what gives the finished rooms their definition. Walls went on in two full coats throughout, cut in by hand at ceiling and trim lines.

Full scope of work

• Walls and ceilings throughout
• Two-story great room and fireplace wall
• Entry hall, foyer and open stairwell
• All trim, casing, baseboard and interior doors
• Bay window and dining room
• Full prep, patching and priming