Fort Mitchell, KY

This homeowner was a former customer who had had us paint her office last year. She was eager to refresh and protect the features of her stately Fort Mitchell home.

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In particular, the gray paint on the columns, fascia and other trim was faded and dull. A darker, more vibrant gray was selected to better contrast the traditional brick body of the home and to accent the details and features.

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The house was pressure washed, and scrubbed to remove algae and mold. In good condition, very little other prep was needed on this property. The crew applied two coats of Sherwin-Williams SuperPaint and had the whole project completed in just three days.

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Newport East Row – Top Job Award 2015


BeforeIn a neighborhood of 3-story Italianate houses called “Mansion Hill” by the locals, the new homeowners of this 2-story brick home called to say that they wanted to have the stand-out house on the block. The house, originally known as the Kirker-Fischer House had history, an elegant interior and a rather plain exterior, compared with many of its neighbors.

The homeowners also said that they envisioned an all-black house. Fortunately they are not only bold, but have great taste, demonstrated by immediately approving a new color palette. The palette has lots of deep gray, dark purple tones and five different blacks, highlighted with metallic copper.

Scraped1The house had been poorly maintained and quickly-rehabbed more than once. The carved stone details were filled in with several layers of old paint. The most recent repaint was fairly fresh, but in some places was barely attached to the brick substrate.

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Lots of old paint was hand-scraped from brick walls and both stone and wood trim. The trim was sanded smooth and some mortar was replaced in the brick. Material-specific primers were used on all bare surfaces.

Window_new trimThe details in the wood window trim were so badly scarred that it was impossible to bring them back, so we clad them with new poplar molding. Other carpentry projects included some minor repairs to the fascia boards plus a line of trim on the front porch roof to add another copper highlight to a very plain area.

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After all this preparation and repair, the highly-detailed plan for painting took another two weeks. Meticulous attention was paid to the surfaces to accent each level and maximize the amount of visible detail.
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The top coats were mostly Sherwin-Williams Emerald along with some Resilience. The project took a 3-person crew three weeks to finish. We knew right away that this was the project we were submitting for American Painting Contractor magazine’s Top Job Award, and we’re very pleased that APC recognized the Kirker-Fischer House as a winner in the category of restoration.

Heritage Village Museum

We are fortunate to have been selected to do some painting at the Heritage Village Museum in Sharon Woods, just north of Cincinnati. This museum contains authentic buildings from Ohio in the early 1800s. We are carefully and lovingly restoring some of the buildings, starting with the Elk Lick House, originally from the east fork of the Little Miami River in Clermont County.

Please visit their website for more information, or come out to Sharon Woods to see some of their historic buildings in person.

A 200 year old clapboard house, with many generations of paint, this project presented many challenges, starting with the fact that nearly every building in the village was some shade of brown. We developed a 4 color palette that would be mostly green, but still use some browns for accents, and suggested more detailing than the house currently had.

Fortunately, the museum had carpenters in to do wood repairs before we started painting. Still, there was a lot of scraping of old paint and it took two cases of caulk to fill all the gaps and cracks.

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We covered the whole house with a solid coat of bonding primer to prevent additional flaking.

 

After masking off the windows to prevent any paint from getting on — or more importantly — through the windows, we sprayed and back-rolled the clapboard siding.

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Although we sprayed the body of the house, there was still a lot of work to be done with brush and roller. Dormers were approached very carefully to not damage the wood-shingled roof. Delicate brushwork and attention to detail was the watchword on the porch, the eaves, shutters and window frames and mullions.

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Finally, we got to work on the fun stuff. A couple of intense days of detailing the front entry left us feeling very pleased with our work.

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Monroe St., East Row, Newport

The new homeowners of this classic East Row house felt that it lacked any presence on a street filled with charming historic homes. They wanted it to stand out, and they also wanted to protect it, as the brick-colored paint was peeling and mortar was disappearing from the bricks. We started with a thorough tuck-pointing of the whole house, scraped off all the loose paint as well as clearing trim of decades worth of old paint that had filled in and smoothed out all the details. Since there was a lot of bare surface when we were done, we primed the walls and trim.

Note that in the East Row, brick can only be painted where it has already been painted. This house had been painted on the front, the back and under the porch, all colored a faux brick red.

The homeowners were excited to see the details emerge from under layers of old paint and asked us to highlight them. We agreed on multiple colors for the porch, as well as metallic copper for several areas on the facade that looked like little balls.
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8th Street, East Row, Newport

One of our local projects, we were able to paint several rooms for this nice couple, including the living room, dining room, a bright red accent wall in the kitchen, and the vaulted ceiling bedroom. A few days after we finished up, they called us back to paint the kitchen cabinets. There’s nothing better than repeat business!

I’m Anne Storey and I live in Newport. We had LVX Painting do our kitchen cabinets, which were dark brown. We wanted them lighter and we painted them white, which looks fantastic. They also painted our red wall for us, and painted our dining room, and painted our bedroom. I’m very happy with the job they did; it’s very professional and I recommend them.

The kitchen was already attractive, but the accent wall needed to be touched up, and despite a lot of windows, the dark cabinets made the space feel smaller and darker.

The bedroom is an interesting space. A previous owner had taken out a small attic to give a vaulted ceiling to the master bedroom. The upper windows give a lot of light. Some minor repairs to the drywall were needed, and it took two days to do the bedroom and bathroom, but with cool neutrals and warm accents, the space looks, as the homeowner says, “fantastic.”

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Willow Run, Indian Hill

Practically overlooking the Ohio River, this converted barn in Indian Hill is a warm and spacious dwelling that is also home to nearly a dozen dogs. The homeowner wanted her two-story bedroom to feel more comfortable and to display her artwork. Together we selected a palette of four colors, working to make sure the bright sunlight streaming through the high windows didn’t swamp our choices.

I’m so thrilled with the work that LVX did. This is a difficult room, with lots of angles and corners and different colors that we were using. It is something that I’m so thrilled with, so proud of. I will highly recommend LVX to anybody that has an interior room to be painted or anything else to be done. Great guys, great service, really meticulous care.

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Morningview, KY

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This delightful country cottage just needed some scraping and a fresh coat of paint. It was a real pleasure to drive out here every day and although it was tempting to put down the brush and pick up a fishing rod, we completed the job promptly.

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This is Jeff Mesmer in Morningview Kentucky and I just want to say that I think they have done an excellent job. The paint looks good, they cleaned up, they’ve been on time. Everything’s very, very neat. I’m very happy with them and I’d definitely recommend LVX to anyone else.

Ludlow KY

Ludlow_Before1Ludlow_After2Ludlow_After1This lovely older home in Ludlow’s riverfront district needed to not look so drab. We changed the muddy gray to a more inviting shade and added bright trim colors to highlight the interesting details.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This earned us our best testimonial ever from little Nevaeh!

Her folks also had a few kind words for us.

605 Monroe Street, Newport

This job came as we were painting next door. The homeowner watched us add color and bring out the detail in his neighbor’s house and asked us what it would take to do the same to his. Since the paint was fairly fresh with attractive but boring colors, it was easy to isolate some of the architectural details and paint them to stand out. We started with a slightly deeper shade of an existing color for the trim, then added a little red and metallic copper highlights. Now this historic home in Newport’s Mansion Hill is distinctive again.
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Before. Nicely painted, but dull.
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Richmond Ave., Union

Red is always a tricky color. Because it is so strong and so dominant in most settings, many furnishings won’t work with it. Wrong shades look very wrong. However, when used correctly, it will add a lot of interest to a space. This large home in Union was ideal for a cherry red accent wall. The main living area was an open plan, and most of the colors were neutral, except for the bright red countertop. We color-matched the countertop, and used it on the main wall that spread from the dining area through the kitchen. The other walls were just repainted to a warmer shade of off-white.

Homeowner comment: “This is just what I’ve always wanted: A bright, cheerful color in the kitchen to show some of my personality.”

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