ProTEK Painters

John Guarino has been personally quoting and running paint jobs around Newton since 1999, and twenty-seven years later he's still the one who shows up to price the work and brief his own crew before they start. ProTEK Painters, based on Union Street in Newton, works the villages around it and neighboring towns including Brookline, Cambridge, Belmont, Lexington, Needham, and Wellesley, doing interior and exterior painting plus cabinet refinishing for houses and the occasional commercial space. The last few months show what that looks like in practice. One homeowner had wallpaper stripped and a living room and bathroom repainted, with touch-ups handled along the way. Another got an entire upstairs done, with textured plaster ceilings smoothed out as part of the job — Guarino came out to quote it, then showed up again in person to walk his crew through the details before they got started. A full kitchen repaint, cabinets, doors and walls together, finished on the day it was promised and drew an "A plus" from the client. A repeat customer, someone who's hired the crew more than once, called the work reliable and clean. That pattern holds at scale, not just in a handful of recent write-ups. Google has ProTEK at 4.9 stars across 115 ratings; Angi puts it at 4.8 across 113. The Better Business Bureau has accredited the company since 2018 and gives it an A+. It's also listed as a member of the Newton Chamber of Commerce, and the company holds an EPA Lead Safe Renovator certification — relevant given how much of its work is repainting older homes in towns like Newton and Cambridge that often have lead paint underneath. The one thing worth asking about before booking: an Angi reviewer said paint on their house started peeling about four years after ProTEK finished the job, and blamed substandard primer and inadequate scraping. Guarino responded publicly, saying the siding itself needed replacing, that the customer had been told so at the time and declined the added cost, and that he'd since offered to redo the repair work at no charge. It's a single dispute against a run of consistently positive reviews going back to 2020, but if you're getting exterior work done, it's worth asking directly what prep and primer he plans to use. For a straightforward exterior repaint, an interior refresh, or a cabinet job with an owner who's still hands-on after this many years, ProTEK is a reasonable call — just get the prep work spelled out in the estimate before you sign off.