Hanson Painting

Ceilings are what keep coming up. One homeowner had Bill Hanson repaint a water-stained kitchen ceiling along with the rest of the main floor's ceilings this spring; another said their problem ceilings came back looking new. A third first-time customer walked through a whole job — estimate to finished great room, its trim, three doors, the casing on newly installed windows and the hallway to the second floor — done by Bill and a crewman named Matt. Hanson Painting works out of 163 Boardman Street in Haverhill. The company calls itself a family-run business owned and operated by Bill Hanson, who says he started painting for a local company in the fall of 2001 and opened his own shop in 2007. Its own service list runs wider than a roller and a brush: interior and exterior house painting, cabinet refinishing and cabinet door replacement, wood and deck restoration, drywall repair, and wallpaper removal. The reviewing history is steady rather than loud — 28 reviews spread from 2022 to 2026 across three sites, none of them negative, and a Google page at 5 stars across 50 ratings. Three of those reviews arrived in the last six months. The pattern that runs through them is finish work: careful prep, ceilings and trim, and the owner himself on the job rather than a rotating crew. Two things are worth pinning down before you call. The first is geography. The towns the company lists for itself sit north and northeast of Boston — Newburyport, Newbury, West Newbury, Ipswich, Boxford, Andover and North Andover in Massachusetts, plus Plaistow, Atkinson, Windham, Rye and Portsmouth in New Hampshire — so if you're south or west of the Merrimack Valley, ask whether they travel. The second is paperwork: painting-only work is exempt from Massachusetts home improvement contractor registration, so there's no registration to check for a straight repaint, but if your project reaches into carpentry, siding or structural repair, ask who is registered for that portion and get it in the written scope. This is the shop to call for an interior repaint where the details matter — ceilings that have taken water, trim and doors, kitchen cabinets you'd rather refinish than replace — somewhere between Haverhill, the North Shore and the New Hampshire line. Confirm they cover your town, and have the estimate spell out prep, repair and cleanup alongside the paint.