Expert Carpenters in Atlanta GA for Custom Carpentry and Woodwork

Inside Our Process — and How to Keep the Finish Looking New

Most cabinet painting pages list the steps. Here's what actually happens inside each one, because this is where the finish is won or lost.

When your doors and drawer fronts come off, each piece is labeled on the back edge with its exact location — and photographed before removal. That sounds fussy until you've seen a 30-door kitchen where three doors are the same size and only one of them closes right. The pieces then travel to our spray setup, where they're hung so every face and edge can be coated without being touched. That's the real reason the finish looks factory-made: your doors are never leaning against a garage wall or stacked on a drop cloth between coats.

Oak cabinets — which is most of what we paint in Alpharetta's 1990s and 2000s kitchens — get one extra step most painters skip: grain management. Oak's open grain telegraphs through paint as a rough, pitted texture no matter how many coats you spray. We back-fill and sand the grain on door faces before priming, so a painted oak door reads as smooth as a maple one. If you like visible grain, tell us — it's your kitchen, and we can keep the texture and still give you the color. Either way it should be a decision, not a surprise.

Between coats, every piece is inspected under raking light — a lamp held at a low angle that reveals dust nibs, drips, and thin spots invisible under ceiling lights — and denibbed with fine abrasives before the next coat goes on. It adds minutes per door. It's also the difference between a finish that looks sprayed and one that looks painted.

Once your cabinets are reinstalled, the first month matters. Cabinet enamel is dry to the touch in hours but keeps hardening for about 30 days. During that window: close doors by the knobs, not by pushing on the painted edge; keep the steamer and the coffee maker's steam vent from blasting one spot (steam is the #1 early-finish killer near stoves); and clean with a soft cloth and plain water or a drop of dish soap — never scouring pads, magic erasers, or degreaser sprays, which dull the sheen permanently.

After the cure, painted cabinets are genuinely low-maintenance: an annual once-over of the high-touch pieces (the sink cabinet and the doors beside the stove take 90% of the abuse), a knob-tightening pass, and you're done. We leave you with a labeled touch-up jar of your exact paint, and if a chip ever does happen — a dropped cast-iron skillet will chip anything — it's a five-minute repair with the jar, not a service call.

Exterior Painting in Georgia: Built for Humidity, Pollen, and Afternoon Storms

Painting a house in metro Atlanta is not the same job as painting one in a dry climate. Our paint has to survive 50+ inches of rain a year, summer humidity that sits above 80%, pollen season, and pine trees shading half the roofline. Here's how we approach exteriors on Alpharetta-area homes — and what your siding type means for the work.

Know your siding. Most homes we paint are one of five materials. Fiber cement (HardiePlank) is the most common in subdivisions built after 2000 — it holds paint beautifully for 12–15 years, but the caulk joints at butt seams and windows fail first and need re-caulking before paint. Brick is everywhere in older Alpharetta and Roswell neighborhoods; unpainted brick is nearly maintenance-free, but once brick has been painted, you're on a repaint cycle — peeling painted brick needs careful scraping and a masonry-specific bonding primer, or the new coat peels with the old. Stucco needs elastomeric or high-build coatings that bridge its hairline cracks and let moisture escape. Cedar and wood siding looks great and rots quietly — boards must be bone-dry before paint or the coating traps moisture and bubbles within a season. Vinyl can be painted with vinyl-safe colors (going darker than the original color can warp panels in Georgia sun).

Rot repair comes before paint — always. The pre-paint walk-through on a Georgia home almost always finds soft wood: window trim and sills, fascia boards behind gutters, soffits, garage door frames, and the bottom edges of siding near mulch lines. Painting over rot is the most expensive shortcut in this business — the paint fails, the rot spreads, and the repair costs double. We probe suspect boards, cut out rotted sections, and replace them with PVC or treated lumber that won't rot again. Small spots get consolidated with epoxy filler. Any painter who quotes your exterior without checking trim with a screwdriver hasn't actually looked at your house.

Timing matters more here than almost anywhere. The two best exterior windows in north Georgia are mid-April through early June (after the yellow pine-pollen blanket settles — paint applied during peak pollen traps it in the finish) and September through early November, when humidity drops and temperatures sit in the 60s–70s. Summer painting is doable but means working around pop-up thunderstorms and watching dew points; paint needs several dry hours to cure, and a surprise 4 p.m. downpour on fresh paint is a real risk in July. Winter work is weather-dependent — most exterior paints need 35–50°F minimums, including overnight.

Budget ranges. Most single-story ranch homes in the area run $2,500–$4,500; typical two-story homes $4,500–$8,500; large two-story homes with extensive trim, three sides of Hardie, or painted brick can reach $8,000–$12,000+. Prep is the swing factor — heavy peeling, rot repair, and color changes (dark over light usually needs an extra coat) move a quote more than square footage does.

One Alpharetta-specific step: your HOA. Most subdivisions here require Architectural Review Committee approval for exterior color changes — sometimes even for repainting in the same color family. Approvals typically take 2–4 weeks, so submit paint chips before you book a crew, not after. Skip it and you risk a fine or a forced repaint; we've seen both. Bring us your approval letter and we'll match the exact approved colors.

Every exterior job starts with pressure washing (included in our prep), a rot and caulk inspection, and a written quote that separates painting from repairs, so you can see exactly what you're paying for.

Interior Painting: Rooms, Finishes, and What It Costs in Alpharetta

Interior painting is the fastest full-room transformation there is — but quotes confuse people because painters price by the room, by the square foot, and by what's included. Here's how to read a quote, what rooms actually cost in the Alpharetta area in 2026, and the finish decisions that determine whether the job still looks good in five years.

Typical per-room pricing (walls, two coats, premium paint included; standard 8–9 ft ceilings, minor nail-hole filling):

What moves a price inside the range: ceilings add about 30–40% per room (and most quotes exclude them by default — check), trim and doors are priced per piece or per room, dark-to-light color changes need an extra coat, and repairs add up. A whole-home repaint on a typical 2,400 sq ft Alpharetta home generally lands between $4,800 and $9,500 depending on ceilings, trim, and condition.

Prep is where Georgia homes show their age. Our clay soil shifts, and houses telegraph it: popped drywall screws, hairline cracks at door corners and ceiling seams, and separated caulk lines at crown molding. Painting over them just highlights them. Before a roller comes out, we fill nail pops, re-tape failed seams, patch dings, and re-caulk trim gaps — it's the difference between a paint job and a refresh. If your walls have real damage (water stains from a past leak, holes from doorknobs), we handle the drywall repair as part of the same visit.

Sheen is a practical decision, not just a look. Flat and matte hide wall imperfections and belong on ceilings and low-traffic bedrooms — but they scuff and don't wash well. Eggshell is the workhorse for living rooms and hallways: soft look, wipeable. Satin is what we recommend for kitchens, bathrooms, laundry rooms, and kids' rooms — it shrugs off humidity and scrubbing. Semi-gloss goes on trim, doors, and cabinets, where durability and a slight shine make the woodwork read as a separate, finished element. Using one sheen everywhere is the most common homeowner mistake: satin on a wavy ceiling shows every flaw, and flat in a steamy bathroom mildews and streaks.

Living in the house during the job? Most of our interior work is in occupied homes. We use low-VOC premium paints as standard (you can sleep in a painted bedroom the same night), mask and drape everything that stays, and sequence rooms so you're never locked out of a kitchen and a bathroom at the same time. A single room is typically a one-day job; a whole main level runs 3–5 days.

And if your refresh includes the kitchen, ask about pairing wall paint with cabinet painting — doing both in one project means one prep cycle, one crew, and colors chosen together instead of matched a year apart.