Layer by layer, a passion for painting builds

It was desperation that led Denise Henderson, 34, to start painting the inside walls of friends' homes five years ago. She would take any job she could get, earning $50 for a room. Now it's inspiration, dedication and passion that keep the full-time decorative painter going. Each year, she's requested by more and more custom builders and decorators, and she now works mostly on million-dollar homes. Several of the houses in the current Wake County Parade of Homes where she has applied faux finishes and decorative painting inside are valued at twice that much.

Different direction: After growing in Florida, Henderson attended UNC-Wilmington. With her communications degree, she spent a year in Las Vegas and took a job in Cary in 1996 to be a project engineer with MCI. She married her husband, David, in 2000 and their son, Jake, was born in 2001. "I left work to stay at home for a year," she said. Everything was on track until just before her son turned 1. "My husband came home with a headache; he'd never had headaches." Within two weeks, at age 32, he was having surgery for astrocytoma, a type of brain tumor. Surgeons had to remove his pituitary gland, but the predicted blindness never came.

More troubles: "He was home for several months; it took him three years to fully recuperate," Henderson said of David. For years he couldn't drive because he had seizures and narcolepsy. He'd worked in sales at WorldCom, and the couple figured they could cash in on the stock to pay for out-of-pocket expenses. Then WorldCom stock went belly up. Next, their son started having seizures. (He grew out of them.) Henderson, afraid to put him in day care, couldn't take a job.

Whatever it takes: "That summer a friend was moving and mentioned he needed the inside of his house painted," Henderson recalled. "I'd painted our house and enjoyed it," she said of the job she did in off-white. "I told him I could do it, and my mom could baby-sit. I charged $50 a room. Then his cousin needed his house painted. People hired me because I was cheap and they could trust me. I spent a year taking on all these little part-time jobs." Her jobs remained standard, but she did raise her prices slightly.

Baby steps: A friend of a friend was having a baby, and wanted a mural in the baby's room. "Can you do murals?" she asked Henderson. "Oh yeah, sure," answered Henderson, who could draw but had never painted artfully. "I went to library that night and read up about how to paint a mural. I was up front with her that it was the first one I'd done. It took a whole week. She wanted trees and butterflies to match the pattern on the baby quilt." Henderson loved doing the mural -- a success -- and enjoyed learning more about decorative painting, from brushes to products. "I'd go home and start practicing on our walls and I'd call friends and say, 'Can I practice on your bathroom?' People started coming to me saying, like, 'Can you do this Tuscan glaze?'"

Slow and steady: By 2003, she felt confident in her abilities. "I started to have a steady little business," she said. "My husband was getting much better. By that I mean we went to the doctor only twice a week." The family still had ongoing medical costs, as well as veterinary bills when her longtime dog got cancer. "It seemed like for the first three years of marriage we could not stop having traumas," she said. "But by the end of 2003, I'd have a good job a week. That's when I went into business."

New heights: After becoming licensed and insured, she called Huntley Design Build, a custom home company in Raleigh. In 2005 the company hired her to paint a spec house. "It was off Wade Avenue, a monster house, with ceilings that were 22 feet high. I was terrified because I'm afraid of heights. I got scaffolding and my husband sat at the bottom in case I fell and he could call 911. Then they gave me two Parade of Homes houses in 2005. I thought I'd just won the lottery every time I got a job." Although she doesn't have a role during the Parade of Homes, her business cards are displayed in the houses she paints. (She painted inside four Parade houses this year.) That work led to other builders, as well as steady work with Raleigh interior designer Natalie Theodorakis.