An interior repaint through the living room and kitchen, with a floor-to-ceiling pantry and its built-in bench finished in a dark sage. The brick fireplace and the hardwood were left as they were.
Two different jobs in one house, and they are priced differently. Walls and ceilings are area work. A painted built-in is cabinet work: degreased, sanded, primed for adhesion and finished so the surface does not show a brush. It is the part of a room like this that people put their hands on every day.
Painting built-in joinery
A built-in cannot come off to a spray booth the way a cabinet door can, so it is prepared and finished where it stands, with everything around it masked. That is slower than doors on a rack and it is why a single painted pantry can take as long as a small room.
A dark color on joinery is also less forgiving than a pale one. Every ridge and every missed spot reads at an angle, so the preparation matters more, not less, than it would on a wall.
What to expect if you want this
If you are thinking about a color like this on built-in woodwork, put a sample on the actual piece and look at it in the evening as well as at midday. Joinery sits in the shadowed part of a room and a dark green reads very differently there than it does on a card.
