Halse & Co. Painting Studio · Bronte

The Process

How a Halse job unfolds.

01

The visit

One morning on site, no charge. We read the surfaces — the layers, the movement, the old repairs. Most of the decisions are made before we quote.

02

The specification

A written scope, room by room: preparation method, primer selection, number of coats, drying intervals, and exactly who does each piece of the work.

03

The work

We arrive when we said we would and work in the order agreed. We share the house with you if that is what the job requires. Nothing is rushed to hit a timeline.

04

The handover

A snag walk two weeks after completion. Touch-ups noted, returned to, finished. Every client receives a written maintenance note for the next ten years.

Halse & Co. is a small painting studio. Two of us, working out of a converted shopfront on Macpherson Street in Bronte. We take heritage interiors across the eastern suburbs and the inner west, one at a time, and we finish them in the order they were intended to be finished.

Federation plaster, Victorian timber and post-war render each behave differently. The first morning on a job is spent reading the house. We map movement in the cornices, find the old repairs that were rolled over instead of cut back, and decide what is paint work and what is something to bring a plasterer back in for. Most of the actual work happens before a tin is opened.

Period interior with timber detailing and warm afternoon light

Sitting room, late afternoon. Paddington.

We take one home at a time and finish it properly. There is no faster way to do this work.

Most of our clients arrive after a bad repaint. The architraves were sprayed without sanding. The cornice lines were cut by a roller. The sash windows were painted shut and have not opened since. We are slow because the only way to undo that work is by hand, and the only way to avoid it the next time is to do it the same way.

The studio takes on roughly twelve houses a year. We work alongside architects, interior designers and homeowners who already know what they want the house to feel like, and have decided that getting there should not be rushed.

Selected Work

Three rooms, recently finished.

Detailed cornice and chandelier in an Edwardian apartment

Edwardian apartment, Woollahra. 2024.

An Edwardian apartment, Woollahra.

Eight weeks. Three rooms. Hand-cut ceiling line throughout.

The brief was to bring back the cornice and ceiling rose without losing any of the original profile. The previous painters had filled the egg-and-dart with putty, then rolled over it. We cut the line by hand and stripped each cornice section back to plaster before priming. The ceiling rose was masked, brushed in three coats, and detailed with a sable round.

The room reads correctly now. The cornice catches afternoon light the way the building's architect drew it to. Nothing more was done than that.

Long heritage hallway with archway and warm interior lighting

Federation terrace, Paddington. 2024.

A Federation terrace, Paddington.

Three months on the brushes. Whole-house repaint.

A two-storey terrace on Cascade Street, taken back room by room over the autumn. The architraves and skirting were treated as joinery, removed where it made sense and sprayed off-site. The hallway was the slow piece. Six coats over three weeks, with the arch cut by hand on each pass, while the floor sander worked downstairs and the plasterer went between us.

The owners moved back in on a Friday. We came back a fortnight later for a snag walk. There were two marks to touch up, both ours. They have been sent the maintenance note for the next ten years.

Ornate ceiling rose detail in a heritage Sydney room

Warehouse conversion, Surry Hills. 2023.

A warehouse conversion, Surry Hills.

Six weeks. Limewash to four rooms. Architect-led.

An 1890s woolstore converted into a single residence, fitted out by the project architect. We were asked for limewash on four of the rooms and a flat hand-laid finish on the rest. The brick had been left exposed in the main room and needed sealing rather than coating. Bauwerk in two custom shades was applied over four days, with the second coat brought in tighter to the corners.

The architect's specification ran to thirty pages. It was the most considered document we have worked from. The walls hold light differently in every room now, which was the point.

The Practice

What we take on.

01Heritage restoration
02Interior repaint
03Cornice & ceiling restoration
04Custom finishes & limewash
05Specialist colour matching
06Sash & timber refinishing

The Studio

Trained on heritage. Based in Bronte.

A painter at work in soft window light, focused on careful preparation

The studio was started by Tom Halse in 2015, after eight years on heritage projects in Paddington and Woollahra and a year on a National Trust restoration program in Britain. The early apprenticeship was under a London joinery and decorating firm working on Georgian townhouses, where the house rule was that nothing got rolled.

Back in Sydney, the work has stayed close to that. The studio is two painters, one apprentice in the warmer months, and a calendar that rarely runs more than three months ahead. Most clients arrive through architects, designers, or a previous owner.

We take on roughly one home a week to view, and a fraction of those become jobs. The houses we do not take are not always the wrong houses. They are sometimes the right houses on the wrong timeline.

Tom Halse

Founder · Halse & Co.

Letters from clients Sample

Notes from finished houses.

Tom spent the first morning of the job walking through the house with a torch and a notebook, mapping the layers under the wallpaper before a single tin was opened. The cornice in the formal lounge had been butchered by a previous painter, filled with caulk and rolled flat; he stripped it back to plaster, rebuilt the egg-and-dart by hand, and cut the line on every pass with a sable round. Three colour drafts went up in the south alcove before we settled on the one. By the time we moved back in, the room read like the period it was always meant to be.

Hugo & Anneliese R·Paddington·Federation terrace, full interior

We are the third owners of a 1920s Edwardian bungalow that had been repainted at least eight times, and every coat had taken something out of the picture rail. Halse & Co. arrived with sample pots, a patch test on the side wall, and the kind of patience our last quote did not have. Two weeks of brushwork on the front rooms, lead-paint remediation handled properly under sheeting, and a wet-edge finish on the architraves you can run a hand along. The front room finally reads as the period it actually is.

Sarah W·Bronte·Edwardian bungalow, interior

Our Victorian terrace had eleven sash windows, six of which had been painted shut for what the previous owner thought was decades. Tom and his apprentice took them out one at a time, stripped the runners, replaced two parting beads, and brushed the frames in linseed enamel before refitting. The ceiling rose in the dining room had lost most of its acanthus detail under old emulsion; he steamed it back over three afternoons and finished it with a flat hand-laid coat. Nothing was rushed, and nothing was hidden under a thick coat of white. The house breathes again.

Marcus & Jane T·Woollahra·Victorian terrace, restoration

Our architect had specified Bauwerk limewash on the main living rooms of a converted woolstore, and we had been turned down by two studios who would not warrant the finish over the existing brick. Halse & Co. read the spec, sealed the brick rather than coating it, and laid two custom shades over four days with the second coat brought tighter to the corners. The walls hold afternoon light differently in every room, which was the whole point of choosing limewash in the first place. The work was quiet, considered, and finished on the day we were promised.

Eliza M·Surry Hills·Warehouse conversion, limewash

The brief on our sandstone cottage was not to make it look new. The previous painters had taken every surface to a builder's white and lost the subtle tonal shifts the original colour palette had between the parlour and the back hall. Tom matched the period palette from a fragment behind the hot-water cupboard, drafted three variants on cardboard sheets we lived with for a week, and then brushed the whole interior in two coats over five weeks. The cornices were cut by hand on every door and window, the picture rails reset where they had pulled, and the finish on the architraves is the closest thing to joinery I have seen from a painter.

Robert & Helen K·Annandale·Sandstone cottage, period colour match

We see one home a week. Send us yours.

Site visits are by appointment, free, and take about an hour. We will write back within two working days.

Or write to [email protected]

By appointment · Eastern Suburbs & Inner West

Painting for considered homes.