Monroe, NC · since 2000
Do Painters Need a License in North Carolina?
There is no state painting license in North Carolina. There is a general contractor threshold, it moved in 2023, and most homeowners are checking the wrong thing.
Chris McManusSeptember 20267 min read
Advice · from a Monroe contractor since 2000
Painting & Remodeling Advice
Nine answers to the questions we get on the phone every week, written out properly. No sales pages, and every figure says where it came from.
- 9questions, answered
- 25years behind them
- 0sales pages
Everything we have written
Nine answers, written out properly.
Ordered roughly by how often the question comes up on a first phone call. Every currency figure on this site names its source and its date, and the sources are listed at the foot of each article.
What Interior Painting Costs in Union County, NC
Every cost guide gives you a national average. None of them tells you why your house will not match it. The number is decided by the wall, not the square footage.
Chris McManusSeptember 20268 min read
Should You Paint Your Kitchen Cabinets or Replace Them?
Almost everybody asks this question about the doors. The doors are the one part that is easy to change. The answer is in the boxes and the layout behind them.
Chris McManusSeptember 20268 min read
How Long Does Exterior Paint Last in North Carolina?
The honest answer is a range, and the range is decided almost entirely by what happened in the four days before the first coat went on.
Chris McManusSeptember 20266 min read
Which Paint Sheen Goes in Which Room?
The higher the sheen, the tougher the film and the more it shows what is underneath. That single trade-off answers almost every sheen question.
Chris McManusSeptember 20266 min read
What Popcorn Ceiling Removal Costs and Involves
Scraping is the cheap part and the part everyone pictures. The money is in what happens to the ceiling afterwards.
Chris McManusSeptember 20267 min read
Deck Staining vs Painting
On a wall this is a taste question. On a deck it is a maintenance question, and the two finishes fail in completely different ways.
Chris McManusSeptember 20266 min read
Getting HOA Approval to Repaint Your Exterior
The committee meets when it meets, not when your painter is free. This is the single most common avoidable delay on a south Charlotte exterior job.
Chris McManusSeptember 20266 min read
Repainting a New-Build Home in Fort Mill, SC
Your walls have one thin coat of flat contractor-grade paint in one shade throughout. That is not a defect. It is the specification, and it is why the hallway looks tired at year five.
Chris McManusSeptember 20267 min read
Start here
Three that save people the most money.
If you are about to hire somebody — us or anybody else — these are the three worth twenty minutes.
Does your contractor need a license?
North Carolina's threshold moved in 2023 and most articles still quote the old figure. What it covers, and how to check any contractor in about a minute.
What interior painting costs
The national average, its source, and the six things that decide why your house will not match it. Five of the six are invisible in a photograph.
Refinish or replace your cabinets?
Nine checks that decide it, and why two published national averages for the same job differ by an order of magnitude.
How these are written
Rules we set ourselves, and you can hold us to.
A contractor's blog is usually a sales page wearing a hat. These are the four rules that stop this one from becoming that, and they are worth knowing before you trust anything on the site.
| The rule | What it means in practice | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Every figure names its source | Where we quote a cost, the sentence says whose figure it is and when it was published, and the sources are listed at the foot of the article | A third-party average that reads like our price is the most common way a contractor's cost page misleads people |
| We do not publish our own price bands | Our number comes from walking your rooms | A band on a web page is one we would then have to argue you out of, which helps nobody |
| No claim we cannot evidence | No awards, no customer counts, no ratings reprinted as our own | Anyone can type them and nobody can check them |
| Photographs are ours or they are labelled | Every photograph in the gallery is a job this crew finished; anything else is marked as an illustration | Stock photography presented as your own work is the oldest trick in this trade |
Who writes these?
Chris McManus, who started the company in Monroe in the fall of 2000. They are written from what he actually tells people on the phone, which is why several of them talk you out of spending money rather than into it.
Why do your cost articles not give your prices?
Because our number comes from walking your rooms, and a band published on a web page is one we would then have to argue you out of. Where we quote a figure it is a published third-party average, the sentence says whose it is and when it was published, and the sources are listed at the foot of the article.
Do you cover jobs outside painting?
Yes — cabinets, ceilings, decks, bathrooms and the licensing question that applies to all of it. The same crew does the carpentry, tile, drywall and paint, so the advice covers the same ground.
How often do you add to this?
Steadily, and driven by what comes up on the phone rather than by a content calendar. If there is a question you wanted answered here and it is not, ask us and it will probably become the next one.
Get a free estimate
Advice only takes you so far.
Everything on this page is general. Your house is not. A free walk-round and a written number is how you find out what any of it means for you.
(704) 507-7150
Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm. Free estimates.
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