Interior Painting & Drywall in Kettering, OH

Kettering borders Dayton, and we serve homes across Kettering from our base in Dayton. AMR Home Services is a Dayton-based company offering professional interior painting and Drywall Installation/Repair services tailored to your style. In Kettering that usually means mid-century houses whose walls have seen a lot of paint and a lot of Ohio seasons. Estimates are free: call or text (937) 829-8873.

Interior Painting and Drywall in Kettering, OH

This is the work we do for Kettering homeowners:

• Interior painting. Walls, ceilings, trim and doors, with the patching, sanding and priming done first. Our interior painting page explains the order of the work and which sheen goes where.
• Drywall repair. Holes, dents, cracked seams, nail pops and old patches that show through the paint. Our drywall repair page shows how a patch is built up and feathered out.
• Drywall installation. New sheets where a wall or ceiling has been opened up, damaged by water or replaced.
• Cabinet painting. Kitchen cabinets cleaned, sanded, primed and painted a new color, with the boxes left in place.
• Textured ceilings. Popcorn and other sprayed textures smoothed out where they can be removed.

Quality work. On-time results. Zero mess. Whether the job is a single hallway or the whole first floor, floors and furniture are covered before work starts, and uncovered and clean when it ends.

Kettering's Mid-Century Homes

Kettering is a city of 57,206 people, and its housing has a clear age. The US Census (ACS 2024 5-year estimates) puts the median Kettering home at 1961. 85.5% of the city's homes were built before 1980, while only 16.9% are from before 1950, so most Kettering houses went up between 1950 and 1979. It is also a city of owners and houses: 64.9% of homes are owner-occupied and 68.7% are single-family detached.

A house about sixty years old has usually been painted many times, by several owners. Trim often carries old oil-based paint under newer latex, and latex over glossy oil peels unless the trim is scuff-sanded and primed with a bonding primer first. Old drips, sags and brush marks are baked into the layers and show through a fresh coat until they are sanded flat. Walls carry the holes of every shelf, curtain rod and TV mount that came and went, and the old fills often show as raised or dull spots under the light.

Cracks, Nail Pops and Old Patches in Kettering Homes

Houses of this age move a little with every season, and the drywall shows it. These are the problems that come up most:

• Cracks over doors and windows. The corners of openings are where a house's movement gathers, so a hairline crack running up from a door frame is common. A crack like that is opened up, bridged with tape and finished in thin coats, because filler alone tends to crack again along the same line.
• Seam cracks. Long, straight cracks along the taped joints between sheets, often on ceilings, where the tape has let go.
• Nail pops. Small round bumps, often in a neat row. Older drywall was usually nailed rather than screwed, and as the framing dries and shifts, the nails back out. The fix is a screw beside the nail, the nail set below the surface, and the spot finished and painted.
• Cracks where the ceiling meets the wall. The corner where two surfaces meet is where seasonal movement shows first. It is re-taped or caulked, depending on how much the corner moves.

The seasons are part of the cause. NOAA's 1991-2020 normals for Dayton International Airport count 109.9 days a year with a low at or below freezing, and summers are humid. A Kettering house is heated and dry for half the year and damp for the rest, and its wood framing shrinks and swells with it. That is why some cracks open in winter and close up in summer. Repairs are only half the job: a patch has to be primed and the whole wall painted, or it shows as a dull spot in the light.

Original Kitchens, Cabinets and Ceilings

Many Kettering kitchens still have the cabinets from an earlier remodel: solid wood boxes with a finish that has gone dark, orange or worn by the handles. If the boxes are sound, painting them changes the kitchen without tearing it out. The doors come off and are labeled, every surface is degreased, sanded and primed, and the color goes on in thin coats. Our cabinet painting page goes through each step and explains when painting is worth it and when it is not.

Ceilings in some Kettering homes have a sprayed texture, from popcorn to swirls, that dates a room as much as the cabinets do. Our popcorn ceiling removal page covers the options, starting with the EPA's advice on older textured ceilings before anyone scrapes them.

Plaster and Lead Paint in Older Kettering Houses

The 16.9% of Kettering homes built before 1950 are a different case. The National Park Service writes that "plaster was the wall surface chosen for nearly all buildings until the 1930s or 40s," so a pre-1950 house here may well have plaster walls rather than drywall. Plaster is harder and heavier and is attached differently, and a crack in it is a different repair from a drywall patch. If your walls are plaster, please mention it when you call.

Old paint is the other question. According to the EPA, "approximately three-quarters of the homes in the United States built before 1978 still contain some lead-based paint." 1978 is the year the federal government banned the sale of lead-based paint for use in homes, and most Kettering homes (85.5%) were built before 1980. Sanding and scraping are what disturb old paint, so tell us the year your home was built when you ask for an estimate.

Kettering is one of several cities around Dayton on our service area page, and our home city has its own page for Dayton. Wherever your house is in Kettering, call or text (937) 829-8873 and tell us what your walls need.

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