Wood staining & trim
Original oak and fir millwork brought back from under decades of paint, then stained and sprayed with a clear build coat.
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Areas we serve
Interior painting, cabinet painting and front door finishing in Whitefish Bay.
Tudors, Colonials and 1920s bungalows with original woodwork that deserves better than another coat over the top. Interior painting here is mostly a question of what to strip and what to leave.
Whitefish Bay has some of the most consistently good pre-war housing stock in the metro area, and it makes for demanding, satisfying finishing work. The Tudor Revival and Colonial Revival houses along and off Lake Drive arrived with millwork, panelled doors and built-ins of a quality that’s simply not specified in new construction now.
The recurring theme in the Bay is original woodwork that has accumulated layers. Trim that was stained and varnished in 1928 has often been painted two or three times since, and underneath there’s frequently quarter-sawn oak in excellent condition. Stripping it back is slow work, but the result isn’t something you can buy.
Period doors are the other constant. Solid panelled front doors with original hardware, sidelights and leaded glass are worth refinishing properly rather than replacing — and they are exactly the kind of multi-profile surface where a brush can’t do what a spray gun can.
About ten minutes from the shop
Whitefish Bay is a short run south-east of Good Hope Road, which makes short-notice walkthroughs easy to fit in. Period doors and original millwork are finished in a booth we set up at the house — nothing irreplaceable goes in a van.
Book a walkthrough in Whitefish Bay
Free, written, itemized and fixed. No obligation and no pressure.
Or call (414) 436-1464
In this neighborhood
What we get asked for most in Whitefish Bay
Door & entryway spray finishing
Period panelled doors with sidelights and leaded glass, finished around the detail rather than over it.
Learn moreCabinet painting & refinishing
1920s kitchens updated once in the eighties and dated again since — the boxes are almost always sound, it is the finish that has aged.
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Older homes
Plaster isn’t drywall, and it matters.
A large share of pre-war Whitefish Bay homes have genuine lath-and-plaster walls rather than drywall. They are harder, they crack differently, and they can’t always be patched with the same approach that works on modern board.
Plaster cracks often follow the lath and recur if they are simply filled. Depending on what is happening behind the surface, the right answer might be a proper repair with a bonding agent, or a skim coat across a wider area to avoid leaving a visible island of new material in an old wall.
We’d rather spend twenty minutes at the walkthrough establishing what you actually have than assume. If you have original woodwork you’re curious about, we can test a small inconspicuous area and show you what is under the paint before you commit to stripping any of it.
Questions
Common questions in Whitefish Bay
Can you repair plaster, or do you only work on drywall?
Plaster, yes. Most of the Bay’s pre-war houses are lath and plaster, which cracks and keys away from the lath in a completely different pattern from drywall. Repairing it means re-establishing a key and building up in coats, not taping a joint — filling a plaster crack with drywall compound is why so many of them come back.
We have original woodwork. Should we paint it or strip it back?
If the timber underneath is worth seeing, we will usually tell you to strip it back. Painting over original oak or fir is quick and very close to permanent: getting to bare wood afterwards costs several times what refinishing it would have. If a previous owner already painted it, that calculation changes, and we will say so.
Can you work while we are living in the house?
Yes, and most jobs here are done that way. Sanding original trim makes fine dust, so we seal the room and extract at the source rather than relying on a dust sheet across the doorway. Cabinet doors and removable trim come off and go into a portable spray booth we set up on site, which keeps the messiest part of the process contained rather than spread through the house.
- Insured in Wisconsin
- 1-year written warranty on all work
- Free written estimates
- Locally owned in Glendale
Also serving
Nearby areas we serve
Cabinet painting and front door finishing in Whitefish Bay.
Tell us what needs doing — or email a photo — and we’ll tell you what is involved. The walkthrough and the written estimate are free.
(414) 436-1464