I dealt in the high-end home business for a long time and the only way to do this is to have a professional painter spray these with lacquer (preferably off-site :-)Sure you can achieve an 'ok' look by yourself but not the 'luxury' look you're talking about.

My painter recommended and used that on one of my stucco houses and it came out great. 

I am trying to build a team of cleaners contractors painters floors guys workers in general.

the private lender was some tidbit of info on the short sale deal and that more than 1 lender was invvolved. they had to find him/her, etc, etc. but that's all done, so that's in the past.tried the non MLS sites and we struggled every time. the MLS tenants are 15x better, they make much more money. so we sleep at night better. the agent stages the house, shows it, i just pay $1k. i love it.i closed at around 11am, the painter is there right now painting. my hvac guy is coming tonight.put down 25%, like all conventional mortgages, was around 22.5k with all fees and such.

It could be a painter, locksmith, etc.The contractor was nice enough to diagnose over the phone for free.  

Just because someone wants to earn that as a painter doesn't mean thats what you should pay.

This is a two part question1) If I hire a painter to paint an entire inside of my rental house for lets say for $3,000 would this be considered a repair expense (improvement) that needs to be depreciated or would it be considered a) a maintenance expense or b) repair expense deducted in the year the painting was performed?    

I’m not saying to pay your framer 30k in cash but if you’re tile guy or painter says he will do the next one for 2700 instead of 3500 if you pay cash.

He's a painter by trade and does good work.

The only reason I ask is painters in my neck of the woods charge between double and triple extra to remove it, compound, and then paint.