House Painters & Drywall in Dayton, Ohio

Dayton, Ohio is our home city. AMR Home Services is based in Dayton, and we paint interiors and install and repair drywall for homes in Dayton, Ohio and surrounding areas. We paint walls, ceilings, trim and doors, patch holes and cracks, hang new drywall and repaint kitchen cabinets. Every job starts with a free estimate: call or text (937) 829-8873.

Interior Painting and Drywall in Dayton, OH

Dayton is a city of 136,579 people and a great many older houses, and most of what those houses need on the inside comes down to two things: the paint and the walls under it. This is the work we do in Dayton homes:

• Painting rooms: walls, ceilings, trim and doors, one room or the whole house, in the colors and sheens you choose. That is our interior painting work.
• Fixing damaged walls: doorknob holes, anchor holes, dents, nail pops, settling cracks and old water stains, patched, feathered and sanded until they disappear under paint. More on drywall repair.
• New walls and ceilings: sheets hung, taped and finished, from one ruined wall to a whole room, through our drywall installation service.
• Kitchen cabinets: doors and boxes degreased, sanded, primed and painted in a new color, keeping the cabinets and layout you already have. See cabinet painting.
• Basements: drywall hung, taped and finished on bare walls and ceilings, then painted, as part of basement finishing.

AMR Home Services has you covered from wall to wall. Behind the walls is another matter: framing, electrical, plumbing and HVAC are other trades, and the permits for them are the city's business. When a project needs those trades, their work comes first and we finish the walls after it.

Plaster vs Drywall in Older Dayton Homes

Dayton's houses are old. The US Census (ACS 2024 5-year estimates) puts the median Dayton home at 1951. 36.7% of the city's homes were built in 1939 or earlier, and 48.4% before 1950.

That year tells you a lot about the walls. The National Park Service's Preservation Brief 21 says "plaster was the wall surface chosen for nearly all buildings until the 1930s or 40s," and that "by the late 1930s, rock lath was used almost exclusively in residential plastering." Rock lath is gypsum board nailed up as a base for the plaster. So a Dayton house from before 1950 very likely has plaster walls and ceilings, while the homes built after the war mostly have drywall.

Under paint the two look alike, but they are not the same wall. Plaster is a hard coat troweled on over lath, and it fails in its own ways: long cracks running out from the corners of doors and windows, and ceilings that sag where the plaster has let go of the lath behind it. A drywall patch is a piece of board, tape and joint compound. A hole in plaster is a different repair. Not sure which you have? Knock on it. Plaster sounds solid and a thumbtack barely goes in, while drywall sounds hollow between the studs and takes a tack easily. If your walls are plaster, or you cannot tell, mention it when you call.

“Great experience from start to finish. Amazing customer service and quality work!”

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Decades of Paint on Dayton Walls

85.4% of Dayton homes were built before 1980. In a house that age, the walls have been painted many times by many owners, and every coat is still there: drips and brush marks sealed under later paint, old patches that sit proud of the wall, glossy oil paint on the trim, and hairline cracks over door frames where the house has settled. A fresh coat over all of that shows every flaw. Prep is what makes the difference. Loose paint is scraped, patches are filled and sanded flat, bare spots are primed, and glossy oil trim gets a bonding primer, because latex paint brushed straight onto old oil paint can peel.

Older homes carry one more fact worth knowing. EPA puts it plainly: "In 1978, the federal government banned the sale of lead-based paint for use in homes." It adds: "Approximately three-quarters of the homes in the United States built before 1978 still contain some lead-based paint." Sanding and scraping disturb old paint, which is why EPA's Renovation, Repair and Painting Rule covers paid work on painted surfaces in homes built before 1978. EPA runs that program in Ohio itself. Tell us the year your home was built when you ask for an estimate.

Painting Dayton Rentals Between Tenants

Fewer than half of Dayton's homes are lived in by their owners. The Census counts 48.4% as owner-occupied, so the rest are rented, and 63.8% of all homes in the city are single-family detached houses. If you rent out a house or an apartment, the time to work on the walls is between one lease and the next, while the rooms are empty.

Turnover work is mostly repair, then paint. Picture hooks, wall anchors and TV mounts leave holes. Furniture rubs marks at chair height. A door with no stop sends its knob through the drywall. We fill and patch the holes, sand them smooth, spot-prime the patches so they do not show through the new coat as dull spots, and paint. The sheen you pick matters for the next tenant: flat paint hides flaws but marks when it is scrubbed, while eggshell or satin wipes clean in hallways, kitchens and bathrooms. Call or text (937) 829-8873, tell us which rooms need work and when the place is empty, and we will set up a time to look.

Painting Through a Dayton Winter

Ohio weather reaches inside the house too. NOAA's 1991-2020 normals for Dayton International Airport count 109.9 days a year with a low at or below freezing. From late fall into spring the windows stay shut and the heat runs: 68.3% of Dayton homes heat with utility gas. Paint and joint compound dry differently in a closed, heated house than in an open one. We check each room against the temperature range on the can's label, keep air moving, and give every coat its full drying time before the next one goes on. Summer is the reverse problem. 11.05 inches of rain falls in June through August, and in damp, muggy air a coat that feels dry on top can still be soft underneath.

Winter is a good season for inside work: a living room repainted, a cracked ceiling patched, a guest room freshened before anyone sleeps in it. Quality work. On-time results. Zero mess. That is how we work in every home, in any season.

Based in Dayton, Serving the Surrounding Areas

Dayton is where we are based, and we serve Dayton, Ohio and surrounding areas. The nearby cities are listed on our service area page. We are open every day from 7 AM to 9 PM. Call or text (937) 829-8873 and tell us three things: the rooms you want done, the year your home was built, and whether the walls are plaster or drywall. Then we set up your free estimate.

Ready to Paint or Patch Your Dayton Home?

Call or text (937) 829-8873 for a free estimate.

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