Finished photos^

Manhattan Property Management Full Building Painter

Everyone likes to be in a space with nicely painted walls, even if its main purpose is being a service stairwell – or two of them for this job -- in a 16-story building. This structure dates back 100 years, and while it probably has not been a century since it was painted, it certainly had been decades. Paint and plaster were chipping and required lots of brushing and scraping even before applying heavy coats of plaster.

A specialty bonding primer is called for to assure that the primer and paint adhere successfully – for more decades – to the newly smoothed plaster. Our team painted the full stairs, along with trim, spindles, handrails, steps and some of the floors between staircases. The black railings against eggshell neutral walls and cool gray floors adds an elegance not often found in stairwells. In fact, there are not many readers who would even think there’s an “elegant service stairwell” anywhere in Midtown, but we all now know of two.  

Before and progress pics:

Attractive space with perfect ceiling trim

Beautiful historic molding

Sutton Place Plaster Molding Restoration

Interior molding raises the bar on style, elegance and interest. It provides a focal point whether around doors and windows, along the tops or bottoms of walls or near the top like a picture rail or around the middle somewhere with a chair rail. These architectural design elements serve as transitions between spaces and are usually crafted with wood or plaster. In this apartment, in the revered Sutton Place neighborhood, water had damaged historic molding.

The project required a creative twist to replicate the original trim. We first patched the wall and trim space. Our team created a custom tool for shaping plaster to the precise form of the original molding. It’s the kind of task that blends tradesman skills with art, form and acute attention to detail. Once the plaster was built up and crafted into an exact duplication of the existing molding, we primed and painted. No one knows or will notice any repair up there, well, except us, the homeowners, and now you, and everyone else who reads this. It’s tricky work, and truth be told, we love creative challenges.

Creating perfect match historic trim

Working toward molding restoration

Back at the beginning with water damage