Painter in Box Hill, VIC
Box Hill, from the towers to the side streets
Box Hill has two kinds of painting work. Around Box Hill Central, Station Street and Whitehorse Road it is apartments: walls, ceilings and doors inside units in the towers and in the older walk-up blocks. Further out, in the streets away from the centre, it is houses and units on their own blocks, many of them post-war and many of them rented.
In the towers, the day is shaped by the building. Lifts have to be booked and padded, loading bays and visitor parking are limited, and the building manager sets the hours trades can work. Paint and drop sheets come up on a trolley. Near the centre, street parking is metered or time limited, so a job in a house there needs a driveway or an agreed spot before the first day.
The apartments are mostly plasterboard with square set or simple cornices, painted in builder's white, with doors and frames that take a beating from furniture moving in and out. The older walk-up flats and post-war houses have plaster or plasterboard ceilings, timber frames and the cracks that come with fifty or more years of settling. Rentals tend to show the same marks: scuffed walls, filled holes and kitchen ceilings that need sealing.
What we do here most
What Box Hill keeps needing
A lot of the work here is turning a unit around between one occupant and the next, inside rules set by the building.
Interior painting
An apartment repainted between two tenants
Units in the towers often need every wall, ceiling and door done in the gap between leases. The lift is booked through the building manager, the work runs inside the hours the building allows, and the rooms are finished in an order that lets the property manager inspect as each one is done. Small holes and scuffs are filled first.
Walls and ceilings
Kitchen ceiling stained by years of cooking
Kitchen ceilings in older units and rentals often carry a yellow film and grease marks that ordinary paint will not cover. The ceiling is cleaned, sealed with a stain blocking undercoat and then painted, so the stain is much less likely to show through the new colour within a few weeks of the tenant moving in.
Plastering
Holes and dents left after a move out
Rentals here often come back with holes from wall mounts, dents behind doors and patches where furniture rubbed the plaster. Each one is cut back, patched and sanded flush, then the wall is painted from corner to corner so the repairs do not show as brighter squares on an otherwise tired wall.
Exterior painting
Eaves and window frames on a post-war unit
The older single storey units in the side streets often have flaking timber eaves and window frames while the brick is fine. The timber is scraped, repaired and primed, and the eaves and frames are painted on their own, which is a much smaller job than a full exterior and protects the timber.
If it is urgent
If water comes through a ceiling in a Box Hill apartment
- 1Check whether the water is coming from the unit above by asking the neighbour or the building manager. Put a bucket under any drip, and switch off the power at your own board for any light fitting near the water.
- 2Leave shared pipes, the roof and the walls between units to the building, and do not paint over the stain yourself. Keep photos of the damage for the owners corporation and the insurer.
- 3When you call, tell us the building, the level and the unit number, who the building manager is, and whether the lift needs booking. Say whether the leak has been fixed and whether there is a loading bay or visitor parking we can use.
Common questions
Frequently Asked Questions
Which parts of Melbourne do you work in?
Melbourne's eastern and inner south-eastern suburbs, from Box Hill, Blackburn and Doncaster through Balwyn, Kew and Camberwell to Richmond, Toorak, Malvern, Prahran and Caulfield. All 25 suburbs are listed on the service areas page. If yours is not there, ask anyway, because the list is where the work goes most often rather than a fence.
Do you do plastering as well as painting?
Yes. Cracks, holes, water damaged patches and loose ceiling sheets are repaired and sanded before the paint goes on, so the repair and the painting are planned as one job rather than two trades working around each other. Most repaints in older houses need some of this, and it goes on the quote as its own line.
Can you fix rotten timber or a sticking door while you are here?
Yes, carpentry and fixing is one of the services, and it usually goes alongside the painting. Rotten weatherboards, soft window sills, loose skirting, sticking doors and broken fence palings are the common ones. Mention them when you call so they are in the quote rather than found on the day.
Do you do insurance repair work?
Yes. Painting and plaster repairs after a leak, a storm or an impact are one of the services. If you have a claim number or an assessor's report, send it with your enquiry and the quote is written against the same items, which makes the two easy to compare.
Do you give a written quote before starting?
Yes. You get it in writing before any paint is bought, listing the rooms or walls, the repairs, the preparation and the number of coats. If something changes once work starts, such as rot under a window sill, it is written down and you decide before it is done.
What do you need from me to quote?
Which rooms or which sides of the house, roughly how big they are, and a few photos taken in daylight. Point out anything flaking, cracked or stained, because preparation changes a quote more than size does. For outside work, say whether the house is single or double storey.
Can you help us choose colours?
We can talk through what tends to work on the house you have and how a colour behaves on that surface in that light. A sample patch on the actual wall is the most reliable way to decide, and it is worth doing before a full tin is bought. The final choice is always yours.
Do I need to move the furniture out first?
No, though clearing small and fragile things off shelves and walls helps. Larger furniture is moved to the middle of the room and covered, and floors are covered before anything is opened. Tell us about anything that cannot be moved, such as a piano or built in shelving.
What hours do you work?
Monday to Friday, 7:30am to 5:30pm. If you live in an apartment or a townhouse with set hours for trades, tell us when you call and the work days are planned inside them.
How long does a room or a house take?
It depends on the preparation more than the painting, so the honest answer comes with the quote rather than before it. A bedroom with sound walls is a different job from one with cracked plaster and a stained ceiling. Outside work also depends on the weather, because paint needs dry surfaces and mild days to go on well.
What happens if it rains during an outside job?
Work on the outside stops while the surfaces are wet, because paint put over damp timber or render does not hold. The day is moved rather than pushed through, and inside work can sometimes fill the gap. We let you know as soon as a day has to move.
Is old paint on an older house a problem?
It can be. Paint on houses built before the 1970s may contain lead, and that changes how it should be prepared, because dry sanding it spreads the dust. Tell us roughly when the house was built and we will talk it through before anything is quoted.
Everything we do here
Services in Box Hill, VIC
These are the eleven things we do across Melbourne, done here to suit apartment buildings with booked lifts and set hours, and the older houses beyond them.
Also nearby
We work in these suburbs too
Local, and on the phone
Painting work in Box Hill
Call or email with the building name or the street, and whether it is an apartment or a house. For an apartment, say who manages the building, because their rules decide when the work can happen.
0431 639 501Monday to Friday, 7:30am to 5:30pm
Not urgent? Send us the job instead