The name is the whole idea.
Redux means brought back. We refinish what most crews would tear out — cabinets with solid boxes, original panelled doors, 1920s oak trim.
A great deal of what gets torn out of houses doesn’t need to be. Kitchen cabinets with solid carcasses get skipped because the finish is dated. Original panelled doors get replaced with hollow-core because the paint has failed. Oak trim from the 1920s gets covered because stripping it’s slow.
In almost every one of those cases the underlying material is better than what would replace it. What has actually failed is the finish — a few thousandths of an inch of coating on the outside of something perfectly sound.
That’s the work we set up to do. Not just painting, though we do plenty of that, but the fine finishing that brings a surface back rather than covering it over: sprayed doors, refinished cabinets, stripped and re-stained millwork, furniture that gets another few decades instead of a skip.
Why we spray
Walls should be rolled. But doors, cabinet fronts, trim and furniture are all looked at from close range, and a brush leaves a texture you can’t unsee once you have noticed it — ridges running with the stroke, an uneven sheen where the coat dried thicker, loaded paint in the corners of a molding.
Spraying puts down a continuous film instead of a series of strokes. It takes considerably more masking, containment and setup, which is exactly why it gets skipped. It’s also the difference between a door that looks painted and a door that looks finished.
How we run a job
Three commitments, and they are the ones we’d want from a contractor in our own house.
You get a fixed price in writing. Itemized, showing what is included and what products we are using. The figure you approve is the figure you pay, unless you ask for more work.
You get your house back every evening. Tools, sheets and materials cleared daily, not at the end of the job. Floors covered properly before anything starts, not after the first spill.
You deal with one person throughout. From the walkthrough to the final check, the same person owns your project. You’re never re-explaining what you asked for to somebody who wasn’t there.
What we’ll tell you not to do
There’s work we turn down or talk people out of, and it’s worth being upfront about that. We’ll tell you when a kitchen is too far gone to refinish, when timber under paint isn’t worth the hours it would take to strip, when an exterior really should wait for spring rather than being rushed into November, and when what you actually need is a carpenter.
A finish applied over a problem is a finish that fails, and the failure has our name on it. We’d rather lose the job than take that on.
Who you’ll be dealing with
REDUX is Simon Henningsen — a local painter, and an artisan painter by inclination. He has spent ten years painting and finishing, and before that worked nearly every other trade on a construction site — framing, drywall, carpentry. That’s the reason he’ll tell you when your problem isn’t the paint: he has built what sits underneath it.
He has lived in Wisconsin his whole life, and works out of Glendale where he lives with his wife. The person who quotes your job is the person who does it, and the person you call if anything is wrong with it afterwards.
At a glance
- Based in Glendale, WI
- Serving Milwaukee’s North Shore
- Insured
- 1-year written warranty on all work
- Free written estimates
- Portable spray booth, set up in your home
- Best on small to medium jobs — larger welcome
- Insured in Wisconsin
- 1-year written warranty on all work
- Free written estimates
- Locally owned in Glendale
We bring the finishing space with us.
A sprayed finish needs clean, still air — which is why most crews brush cabinets and doors in place, or drive them away to a shop. We set up a portable spray booth in your house instead, so the work is done properly without anything leaving your home.
No dust
A sprayed finish is wet for long enough to catch anything in the air. Inside a booth, with a blower drawing air through it, there’s no drifting dust, no pet hair, and no one walking past at the wrong moment.
Flat and horizontal
Doors and cabinet fronts sprayed lying flat can’t run or sag. Gravity works for you instead of against you, which is why factory finishes look the way they do.
Nothing leaves your house
Your doors and drawer fronts never go in a van, never sit in someone else’s workshop, and can’t come back scratched or swapped. They come off, get finished in the booth, and go back on — all under your roof.
Questions people ask before hiring
Are you insured?
Yes, and we’re happy to provide documentation before work starts — you should ask that of anyone you let into your home. That, plus the one-year written warranty stated on your estimate, is what actually protects you if something goes wrong.
Do you offer a warranty?
Yes — a one-year written warranty on our work, with the terms stated on your estimate before you accept it rather than buried afterwards. If something we did fails within that year, we come back and put it right.
Do you use subcontractors?
The finishing work is ours. If a job needs a trade we aren’t — a carpenter for structural rot, a plumber behind a water-damaged ceiling — we’ll tell you that rather than attempt it.
How do payments work?
The estimate is fixed, itemized and agreed in writing before we start. We’ll set out the payment schedule at that point. There are no hourly surprises and no change to the figure unless you ask for additional work.
What if I am not happy with something?
Tell us at the final walkthrough, which exists precisely for that. Anything you aren’t satisfied with gets corrected before we invoice. That’s a much easier conversation than one that happens after payment.
Come and see what we’d do.
The walkthrough costs nothing and commits you to nothing. Worst case, you get a straight opinion about what your surfaces actually need.
(414) 436-1464