Painting the Town: Kevin Sheridan Makes Rutgers Painting a Household Name

Kevin Sheridan is a born entrepreneur. He spent much of his middle school years going door to door, selling stickers for the Pop Warner Maplewood-South Orange Packers to raise money for football equipment. In high school, he was spending summers painting and powerwashing houses—knocking on doors to solicit business. And by his sophomore year at Rutgers University, he had founded his own business: Rutgers Painting. It does a significant amount of work in Chatham.

"I needed a way to pay for college," says Sheridan, whose scholarship for wrestling only covered part of the cost.

Sheridan founded Rutgers back in 1992. Now, at 38, he is an established businessman who runs his painting company and also manages a few multi-family properties in and around town.

Going door to door in fifth through eighth grade selling those stickers provided "more than I could learn in any business school," said Sheridan, who earned his degree in history. 

"I did that for four years and you can still see those Packer stickers on some windows."

Rutgers Painting is based in Maplewood, but Sheridan says Chatham has become a place where he does lots of projects.

He said he is able to name, off the top of his head, ten people with whom he went to high school who relocated westward to Chatham. His vast network has paid off in business terms—his company now, on average, works on five to six homes a week in the township and borough.

He's even painted the home of a former Maplewood High School football player named Jack Sherwood. Sherwood now lives in Chatham, and Sheridan said he used to watch in awe as Sherwood would take the field in high school. Sherwood is Sheridan's senior by nine years.

"Painting his house was kind of like an honor," Sheridan said.

Sheridan's brother Jim earned a lacrosse scholarship to Rutgers, and sister Christine went to the University of New Haven on a volleyball scholarship. Sister Jennifer made her own way as well and works as a massage therapist.

"Mom said, 'Listen, if you want to go to college, you've got to get a scholarship.'" Sheridan credits one "lucky" day where he earned second place in the state finals in wrestling for getting him his Rutgers scholarship. In return, Sheridan has given back in spades.

He has coached wrestling at Columbia High School in South Orange, and has donated vacation stays at a property in Costa Rica to local charity benefits.

Sheridan has also reached out to his workers. Through a contact at Newark Paint, Sheridan befriended a man from Costa Rica. Eventually, this friend invited Sheridan to come visit his country. 

Sheridan, it seems, fell in love with the lush beauty of the Central American nation, eventually making regular trips to Costa Rica, hiring Costa Rican workers, and building a small beachfront hotel named Villas Almendros.

He became aware of the H2B visa program, which was used for seasonal or migrant workers like loggers. H2B are temporary work visas that last for six months, something he said was perfect for his "guys." "In the winter, there's no business. I would lose them and have to retrain crews."

The option for many Central Americans hoping to make a living is to pay a coyote about $7,000 to get them into the U.S., said Sheridan. Then they must stay for at least three years to pay off that debt, finding themselves idle and lonely in the off season and burning through savings.

With an H2B visa, workers can enter legally and go home and visit their families in the winter. 

With their help, Sheridan hopes his business will continue to survive and thrive. He has been painting in Chatham for about 14 years, and shows no signs of stopping, even though he is based in Maplewood. Its status as a place with lots of families, he said, might have something to do with that.

"It's a similar housing stock," he said. "[And] in towns that have [lots of] families, we tend to do well, because people talk a lot. We don't spend money on advertising."