Hellertown, Northampton County
Interior painting in Hellertown, PA.
Durham Terrace's story-and-a-half Capes put two bedrooms under the roof, where slopes, knee walls and angles turn a small room into a great deal of cutting in. Main Street's older houses ask for different care.
Interior painting for Hellertown homes
Durham Terrace went up nearly all at once: 154 Cape Cods of a story and a half, built between 1951 and 1954, with a central stair rising to a small upper floor of two bedrooms. It is the clearest picture of the borough's biggest building years, the 1940s and 1950s, when more than a third of its present homes were built.
Rooms under a roof are where interior painting gets exacting. The ceiling slopes down to meet a short wall, and every angle is a line of paint that has to run straight on surfaces that are seldom quite flat. In rooms this small nothing is far from the eye, so a wavering line or a patch that flashes through the finish gets noticed every day.
Hellertown
Durham Terrace Capes and the rooms under the roof
A Cape's upstairs bedroom has more planes than walls: the flat ceiling, the slopes that fall from it, the knee walls below them, and the window wall, often a gable end or a dormer. Where two planes meet, the joint flexes with the seasons and tends to crack, so each angle is repaired before it is painted; otherwise the crack comes back through the new line. Mountainview, begun in 1940, filled in through the same two decades.
The older houses along Main Street, the old King's Highway, run from about 1800 into the early 1900s and ask for another kind of care: plaster with a long history, and trim carrying many coats. Around the borough, Lower Saucon Township is newer, with about half its homes built since 1980, and the work there is drywall, taller rooms and longer walls.
Worth knowing
The central stair
A stair rising through the middle of a small house is tight to stage. Its treads are covered and the staging set so the stairwell walls are reached without leaning a ladder on fresh paint.
Fewer colors upstairs
On a story-and-a-half floor, the hall, stair and bedrooms are seen together. Fewer colors, changing at doors rather than partway along a wall, keep the small floor from looking chopped up.
Judged up close
In a small bedroom the walls are seen from a few feet away. Sanding marks, brush lines on the trim and heavy roller texture all show at that distance, so the finish is checked from there.
The work
How the work goes
The same care on every job, in every town. The full guide to interior painting.
The walkthrough
Randy walks the rooms with you and looks at the walls in the light they actually get. He tells you plainly what they need, then puts it in writing. The walkthrough and the written estimate are complimentary.
Repairs first
Cracks, holes, nail pops and failing plaster are dealt with before anything else, and every patch is sanded flat. Paint doesn’t hide a poor patch; it shows it.
Primer where it’s needed
Patches, bare drywall and stains are primed. Joint compound takes up paint differently from a painted wall, and an unprimed patch can flash through the finish as a dull spot.
Finish coats
Ceilings, walls and trim are cut in and rolled or brushed, each in the sheen chosen for it. A big change of color takes more coats than a refresh, and the number is set by the wall, not the calendar.
Seen in the room’s own light
Before the drop cloths come up, the walls are looked at in the light the room really has, from its windows and its lamps. Low sun and lamplight show what an overhead work light hides.
Questions
Interior painting, Hellertown.
Should the sloped ceilings in our Durham Terrace Cape be painted like the walls or like the ceiling?
Either works. Carrying the wall color up the slopes to the flat ceiling makes the walls read taller; painting the slopes with the ceiling keeps the room brighter overhead. What matters most is that the break falls on a real edge and is cut clean, which means the joint there has to be sound first.
What sheen should go on a sloped ceiling?
Flat, in most rooms. A slope catches light from the window at a low angle, much as a wall does, and any shine shows its joints and small waves. If the slopes take the wall color in a room that gets wiped down, a washable matte is a fair middle ground.
Our Main Street house has old plaster and older trim. Where does the work start?
With the walls and woodwork, well before color. Cracks and loose plaster are repaired, old patches sanded flat, and the trim scraped back to a sound layer and caulked where it has pulled from the wall. In a house that age the preparation is most of the job, and the finish coats are the shortest part of it.
More in Hellertown
Other services here.
- Level 5 drywall finishA skim coat over the entire surface, for walls that hold up under raking light and dark paint.
- Skim coatingRough, patched or uneven walls resurfaced smooth, often after wallpaper comes down.
- Plaster repairCracked, loose and failing plaster in older homes, repaired and made sound.
- Exterior paintingSiding, trim, porches, stucco and brick, prepared to stand up to Pennsylvania weather.
- Drywall installation & repairNew drywall hung, taped and finished; cracks, holes and water damage repaired invisibly.
- Drywall texture matching & removalTexture matched so repairs disappear, applied where you want it, or taken off for a smooth wall.
- Popcorn ceiling removalOld acoustic texture taken down and the ceiling finished smooth.
- Wallpaper removalOld wallpaper and wall linings stripped without tearing up the wall beneath.
- Wood stainingDecks, porch floors, doors and trim, inside and out, stained by hand.
Consultation
Request a private consultation.
Private walkthrough & written estimate, complimentary. Tell us a little about the house and the rooms, and Randy will be in touch to arrange a time.
- Hours
- Monday – Friday8:30 AM – 5:30 PMSaturday10 AM – 3 PMSundayClosed
- Service area
- Easton, Bethlehem, Allentown and the greater Lehigh Valley; Bucks County, Pennsylvania.
Fully insured — proof on request. Residential and commercial.