House Painters in Grosse Pointe, Michigan

Estate stock, and the standard that came with it

The Grosse Pointes are where this company takes its name, and the housing stock here is the reason we finish the way we do. These are largely 1920s and 1930s houses with real plaster, deep millwork and joinery that was expensive when it was new. You cannot spray through a house like that and call it done.

Estate stock, and the standard that came with it

Albert Kahn designed more than four hundred buildings across metro Detroit, and his residential work here ran to English Domestic Revival and Tudor for Detroit’s industrial families, the Edsel and Eleanor Ford house in Grosse Pointe Shores among them. Even the houses that were never Kahn’s were built to be looked at alongside the ones that were. Trim lines and sash work here are judged at close range.

Plaster is not drywall

Ninety years of seasonal movement opens the same cracks in a plaster wall again and again, and a wall that has been patched a dozen times is no longer one plane. Prep here is genuinely a plastering job before it is a painting one, which is why we do the plaster work ourselves rather than painting over somebody else’s filler.

Millwork that has been coated for a century

Original casing, crown and built-ins in these houses carry a lot of accumulated coats, and detail gets softer with every one. Bringing a profile back means sanding it back rather than adding to it, and then spraying, because a brush leaves marks that read badly on millwork this good.

Living beside Lake St. Clair

Wind off the lake drives rain into exposed elevations, humidity stays high well into autumn, and the salt that keeps these streets clear in January finds its way onto lower siding and porch work. Exteriors here get specified for that rather than for an average Michigan house.

Questions we hear in Grosse Pointe

Do you work in all five Grosse Pointes?

Yes, the Park, the City, the Farms, the Woods and the Shores. The housing stock shifts as you move along Lakeshore, but the standard the work is judged by does not.

My plaster cracks every winter. Is that a painting problem?

It is a plaster problem wearing paint. The crack reopens because the wall is moving or the plaster has lost its grip on the lath, and paint alone re-tears within a season. We repair the mechanism first. It is why we do plaster work ourselves rather than painting over someone else's filler.

How often do exteriors need repainting this close to the lake?

Sooner than the same house would ten miles inland. Wind off Lake St. Clair drives rain into east-facing elevations, humidity hangs on into fall, and winter street salt finds the lower siding and porch work. We specify for that exposure, and it is worth recoating the weather side early rather than waiting for the whole house to be ready.

Can one crew handle the plaster and the painting together?

That is precisely how we are built. The plaster work and the finish work sequence as one project under one crew, no gap between trades, no painter blaming the plasterer, and no wall painted before it was ready. On houses this age, splitting those trades is where quality leaks out.

Do you paint window sash and reglaze?

Yes. Original sash work is part of the old-house trade: paint cut to the glass line, putty repaired where it has failed, and windows left operating rather than painted shut. Painted-shut sash is the signature of a rushed crew, and these houses have suffered enough of those.

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