Andover Colonials, Prepped Before Anyone Paints

An Andover house often carries three different centuries of work on it. The core is a nineteenth century colonial or a Victorian with original trim, plaster over lath, and window sash that has been painted shut and forced open again more times than anybody kept track of. Then there is a fifties addition, then a kitchen from fifteen years ago. Each part behaves differently under a brush. On the old sections prep is the entire job: scrape back to a sound edge, feather the ridge so the line does not telegraph, fill, sand, spot prime, and only then coat. Skip that and the new paint reads every ridge underneath it by the second summer. Plaster cracks over doorways need bridging rather than filling, because the crack is still moving. Shawsheen Village adds its own discipline, since the houses there sit in a planned neighborhood where a badly matched repair is obvious from the sidewalk. Outside, granite steps and fieldstone walls in the older streets have shifted with frost, and a step that now pitches toward the front door is sending water exactly where you least want it.

Andover's commercial side runs in two places that behave nothing alike. Downtown, the shops and restaurants around Main Street and Elm Square sit in tight buildings with shared walls, short loading windows and customers on the sidewalk all day, so interior painting and floor work happen after close and the storefront glass gets done before the doors unlock. Out along River Road and the office parks near the highway the buildings are larger and empty at night. Suites there get repainted between tenants, and a fit out for an incoming tenant means sequencing behind the electrician and the carpenter, never beside them. Medical and dental practices book a Friday evening into Saturday, because the operatories cannot be wet on Monday morning. Property managers here usually want the whole building priced at once: the common corridor, the stairwells, the entry brick that has spalled beside the doors, the lot side that nobody looks at. One visit covers all of it, the scope lists it area by area, and we are licensed and insured with the certificate sent before a crew shows up.

What we take on in Andover

• House cleaning, deep cleans and recurring visits
• Move in and move out cleaning for owners and landlords
• Post construction and renovation handover cleaning
• Pre sale cleaning before the photos and the first showing
• Interior and exterior painting, and cabinet refinishing
• Repointing, chimneys, steps, walkways and patios
• Pressure washing for siding, driveways, decks and storefronts
• Offices, retail, practices and restaurants around your hours
• Common areas and unit turnovers for property managers

Getting a price

Every quote for Andover starts with somebody standing in the actual place. Square footage over the phone is a guess, and on a wall it is worse than a guess, because the failure depth only shows when you put a hand on the joint. You get the scope written out area by area and one number for the job, usually the same business day.