The person who quotes your job is the person who paints it

Who you're actually hiring

Thomas J Craigen has been painting for more than forty years. Apex Painting is the most recent of the companies he has run — it was founded in 2019, and it is deliberately small. He is the owner-operator, which means the person who comes out to look at your house, writes the estimate, and does the work is the same person. There is no salesman, no project manager, and no crew of subcontractors you have not met.

That is worth being plain about, because a young company and an experienced painter are two different things and most contractor websites blur them. Apex Painting has existed since 2019. The judgement behind it is four decades older than that, and it is the second number that decides how your house turns out.

Forty years in one region changes what you know. Spokane County is not one climate or one housing stock. A 1915 house on the South Hill, a 1960s Valley ranch with cedar siding, and a new build in Liberty Lake each fail differently and need different preparation. South-facing elevations here take enough UV to chalk a finish years before the north side of the same house shows anything. Freeze-thaw finds every gap that was not sealed properly the previous time.

Everything Apex takes on is within about seventy-five miles of Spokane, from Deer Park and Chattaroy in the north down to Spangle and Rockford, and east through the Valley to Liberty Lake. That radius is deliberate. It is the area reachable without charging for travel, and close enough to come back and look at something if it needs looking at.

Mostly what experience buys on a paint job is not a faster crew. It is a better read on what a particular house actually needs, and which parts of the estimate are worth the money.

What we don't do

Apex does not take on homes with known lead-based paint. If your home was built before 1978 and the job means disturbing those old layers, this is not the right contractor and you will hear that on the first visit rather than after a deposit. That work wants someone EPA RRP-certified, and Thomas would rather point you at one than take the job.

Where it is a different conversation is when the existing paint is sound and the work is coating over the top without cutting into what is underneath. That describes a lot of houses in this county, and it is worth a look.

This is on the About page because it is the kind of thing most contractors leave for you to discover. A straight answer about the work someone will not take is worth more than a longer list of the work they will.