Quakertown, Bucks County
Interior painting in Quakertown, PA.
Most of the borough's houses have front porches, and a porch roof changes the light in the room behind it. Painting a Quakertown house often starts with the parlor that never sees the sky.
Interior painting for Quakertown homes
The historic district's nomination notes front porches on most of the borough's houses, and a porch changes the room behind it. The roof cuts off the sky, so the front room gets light bounced up from the porch floor and the street rather than daylight from above, and it reads darker than the rooms at the back of the house.
That shapes the color. A shade chosen in a bright kitchen can turn heavy in the front parlor, and the parlor is often the room people most want to get right. Its outside walls are often plaster laid on stone or brick, in houses the nomination describes as large, square and solid: two and a half stories of masonry, some of it stuccoed.
Quakertown
Porch-shaded parlors and Foursquare rooms
Rows and twins make the effect stronger. The borough built clusters of substantial brick and stone row houses with full-length porches, so the front rooms along a whole block sit in the same shade, and their shared side walls have no windows at all. Light enters low, from the front only, and runs far enough along the side walls to show every old patch in their plaster.
The Foursquares and Craftsman houses of the early 1900s, most of them in the middle and northeast of the borough, are a kinder case: roughly square rooms, four to a floor, many with windows on two walls, so light crosses from more than one side and colors read truer. Local builders made most of them in masonry, and their plaster tends to crack where the masonry has moved, at window heads and corners. Out in Richland Township, about three in ten homes date from the 2000s.
Worth knowing
Samples in the shade
Paint samples for a front room are judged on its own walls, at the hours it is used. The porch makes it the least predictable room in the house.
Broad Street's oldest houses
The early houses along Broad Street, from about 1840 to 1860, are plain boxes, plastered or frame. Their rooms are simple and their walls old, so the preparation outweighs the trim.
Towers and gables
Queen Anne rows with corner towers and gambrel or stepped gables have upstairs rooms with angled walls and odd corners. They take more cutting in than their floor area suggests.
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, Quakertown.
Our front parlor sits behind a deep porch and always looks dark. What helps?
The ceiling and trim help as much as the wall color. A bright ceiling and trim a little lighter than the walls send back what light comes in under the porch roof. The walls can then be chosen for how they look in shade, which is how the room is mostly seen.
Why do cracks keep coming back above the windows in our masonry house?
Masonry houses move a little with the seasons, and plaster cracks first where the wall is weakest, at the corners of window and door openings. A crack that is only filled tends to reopen, so it is opened, bridged with mesh tape set in a setting compound, feathered and primed, and then painted with the rest of the wall.
Is painting a Richland Township house different from painting an older one in the borough?
Very. A house from the 1990s or 2000s has drywall, larger and more open rooms and often a tall wall or two, so the work is resetting fasteners, fixing seams and carrying color across open space. The borough's houses ask for plaster repair, careful color in porch-shaded rooms and a great deal more brushwork.
More in Quakertown
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.