We are in a townhome. Is that different from painting a house?

In two practical ways. The stairwell is usually a two-story run of wall that needs proper staging to cut in cleanly, and there is nowhere to move furniture to, so everything is sealed and worked around in place. Prince Frederick has one of the county's biggest concentrations of townhomes, so it is work we do regularly here and rarely anywhere else.

Our walls are plaster, not drywall. Does that matter?

Yes. Plaster is absorbent and alkaline and needs a proper primer rather than a paint-and-primer-in-one. It should also be checked first — if a section sounds hollow when pressed, it has come away from the lath behind and needs re-fixing before painting. Cracks need opening and filling rather than skimming, which is why they keep coming back on houses that have been repainted without it.

Can our oak trim and cabinets be painted white?

Yes, and it is one of the most transformative things you can do to a house of that era. It has to be prepared properly though: deglossed, scuffed, and sealed with a stain-blocking primer, because oak tannin will bleed through an ordinary primer and yellow the finish. Done that way it lasts; done quickly it peels at the edges within a year.

Why does Prince Frederick need a different approach from the rest of the county?

Because it has no single dominant era. Elsewhere in Calvert most houses in a town were built within a decade or two of each other, so there is a typical job. Here you can be painting plaster in one house, oak trim in the next street and a three-story townhome stairwell after that. Dale walks the house before quoting for exactly that reason.

Interior Painter in Prince Frederick, MD

Townhomes, which the inland towns barely have

Almost all of Calvert County is detached houses on land. Prince Frederick is the exception — Magnolia Ridge, Calvert Towne and Prince Frederick Crossing give the town a body of townhome stock that simply does not exist in Dunkirk, Sunderland or Port Republic. That changes interior painting more than people expect.

Townhomes are vertical. The living space stacks over three floors and the stairwell becomes the largest continuous painted surface in the house, often two stories of uninterrupted wall with no safe place to stand a ladder. That is a staging job, not a step-stool job, and it is the part of a townhome quote that separates someone who has done it from someone who has not.

They are also tight. There is no spare room to stage furniture into and no garage to work out of, so sequencing matters — you cannot empty the middle floor into the next room, because there is no next room. We work these differently from a detached house, room by room with everything sheeted rather than moved out.

Stairwell walls
The tall run over the stairs needs proper staging to cut in cleanly at the ceiling line. Done off a leaning ladder it shows, and it is the first thing the eye goes to on the way in.
Shared walls
A party wall behaves differently from an exterior wall — sound, movement and any settlement cracking run along the line where it meets the ceiling. Those get filled properly rather than smeared over.
Nowhere to put anything
In a townhome the furniture stays in the room and gets sealed rather than carried out. Sheeting properly is the whole game.
Whole-height color decisions
In a stacked layout one color usually carries up the stairwell through all three floors, so it has to work in the light on every level. We put samples on the actual walls before you commit.

The older houses: plaster, not drywall

In the oldest pockets of Prince Frederick you are painting plaster, not board, and that is a genuinely different surface. Plaster is alkaline and absorbent, so a modern all-in-one paint-and-primer sits on it badly. It wants a proper primer.

It also needs testing before anything else. Press a plaster wall firmly — if it gives or sounds hollow, the plaster has separated from the lath behind it, and painting over that is a waste of your money. That section needs re-fixing first. Hairline cracks want opening into a shallow groove, filling and spot-priming rather than being skimmed over, which is why they keep reappearing on houses that have been repainted repeatedly without it.

Split-foyers, oak trim, and the 1990s colonials

The 1970s and 1980s split-foyer and split-level stock brought two things with it: textured ceilings and stained oak. Oak trim, oak-faced doors, oak cabinets — the standard upgrade of the decade, and now the single most common thing people ask us to paint out.

It is very doable and it transforms a room, but oak is the hardest trim to convert. The grain lifts when it is wetted, the old lacquer has to be scuffed or nothing will stick, and the tannin in the timber will bleed straight through an ordinary primer and yellow your white trim. It needs a proper stain-blocking primer and it needs patience. A great deal of the failed, peeling painted trim we are called to fix in this town is oak that somebody rolled straight over.

The 1990s and 2000s colonials are a gentler job — screws rather than nails, so fewer pops — but they carry the standard builder legacy of paint applied over unprimed board. Every repair on those walls needs spot-priming, or it dries duller than the wall around it and shows in the side light.

Prince Frederick questions we get asked

We are in a townhome. Is that different from painting a house?: In two practical ways. The stairwell is usually a two-story run of wall that needs proper staging to cut in cleanly, and there is nowhere to move furniture to, so everything is sealed and worked around in place. Prince Frederick has one of the county's biggest concentrations of townhomes, so it is work we do regularly here and rarely anywhere else.
Our walls are plaster, not drywall. Does that matter?: Yes. Plaster is absorbent and alkaline and needs a proper primer rather than a paint-and-primer-in-one. It should also be checked first — if a section sounds hollow when pressed, it has come away from the lath behind and needs re-fixing before painting. Cracks need opening and filling rather than skimming, which is why they keep coming back on houses that have been repainted without it.
Can our oak trim and cabinets be painted white?: Yes, and it is one of the most transformative things you can do to a house of that era. It has to be prepared properly though: deglossed, scuffed, and sealed with a stain-blocking primer, because oak tannin will bleed through an ordinary primer and yellow the finish. Done that way it lasts; done quickly it peels at the edges within a year.
Why does Prince Frederick need a different approach from the rest of the county?: Because it has no single dominant era. Elsewhere in Calvert most houses in a town were built within a decade or two of each other, so there is a typical job. Here you can be painting plaster in one house, oak trim in the next street and a three-story townhome stairwell after that. Dale walks the house before quoting for exactly that reason.

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More on Interior Painting

This page covers interior painter in Prince Frederick. For how the work actually runs — the order we do things in, what is included, and what it costs to put right — read the full interior painting page.

Interior Painting