Biddeford Painting - Kim Cochrane-Coleman
- Brick + Tides
- Nov 20
- 8 min read
Updated: 6 days ago
Jasper fixed appliances, Scott ran the lanes that kept Biddeford rolling, and Kim paints the places people live their lives.
In this city of brick mills and salt air, the Cochrane name has long meant something simple but powerful: care for what’s yours, and care even more for what you share. Three generations have done that in three different ways—repairing, maintaining, and now renewing.
This year, that legacy reaches a new milestone. Biddeford Painting celebrates its 50th anniversary—half a century since Scott Cochrane opened the business in 1975 with a single ladder, a few brushes, and a promise to work hard for his neighbors.
Fifty years later, his daughter Kim Cochrane-Coleman carries that same promise forward, brushstroke by brushstroke, across the same neighborhoods her grandfather once delivered appliances to and her father once filled with the sound of bowling pins and laughter.
When she paints a house, she’s not just sealing cedar against weather. She’s sealing memory against time.
The Business of Belonging
Biddeford Painting doesn’t sound romantic until you see what it leaves behind—windows trimmed sharp and white, porch rails clean as new bones, walls bright enough to make winter light look kind again. Kim runs a crew of six full-time painters, a shop assistant, a runner, an administrator, and herself. Together they cover a twenty-mile circle, from Ogunquit up to South Portland, sometimes stretching further for longtime customers.
Her rules are simple: communicate, be honest, work safely, and finish strong. “We’re professionals,” she says. “We care about the job.” And she means it literally. Every wall matters. Every nail hole filled is a small promise kept.
That care—and that name—have lasted through recessions, storms, and generations. In a trade where companies often come and go, Biddeford Painting’s 50 years represent not just endurance, but evolution. Kim is the proof of that. “My father always said, ‘Say yes first, figure it out later,’” she says. “And he always did.”
The Projects that Stay With You
Some projects are about square footage. Others are about heart.
When St. André’s Church in Biddeford began its transformation into My Place Teen Center, the scale was daunting: 60-foot ceilings, scaffolding, a tangle of history. Her father’s old friend Jim Godbout had first taken the call, but by the time the building was ready for paint, Kim was at the helm. She studied the vaulted ceilings and wondered how the original builders ever reached so high without today’s machines. Then came the problem of the altar—the gold leaf that couldn’t be touched by overspray.
One night she went back alone, thinking. By morning she had the answer: shower caps. A whole case of them. Each one stretched over a gilded ornament like a halo. When her crew sprayed the ceiling, the gold stayed untouched and radiant.
It was a small, clever act—something her grandfather or father might have invented on a deadline—and it perfectly captured her instinct: protect what’s beautiful while you make what’s next.
This fall she’s been pouring the same heart into a different kind of sacred space: the softball fields at May Field. For years, the girls’ league worked out of three sheds and two porta-potties. Kim, now a board member, decided that wasn’t good enough. She called Jim Godbout again. “The girls deserve proper plumbing,” she told him. Together they’re building a real concession stand and bathrooms—something lasting, something fair.
Built on a Bowling Lane
The drive to work hard, and find fun in the doing, came straight from her father, Scott Cochrane.
In 1975, he founded Biddeford Painting, painting houses in the summer while running 20th Century Lanes through the winter. That two-track rhythm kept the family busy, and taught Kim and her siblings that business wasn’t just about income, it was about ingenuity.
At home, idleness was forbidden. “If you sat too long on the couch,” Kim laughs, “Dad assumed you needed a job.” He turned chores into games and bets, who could unload the dishwasher faster, who could vacuum the stairs better, so that work felt like a competition you actually wanted to win.
Her mom, the wallpaper expert, kept everything together. In the 1980s, when floral borders and accent walls were in high demand, she installed them with precision and grace. Between that, the bowling alley, the mail routes, and four kids, she was the glue of the operation.
And before all that, there was Jasper Cochrane, her grandfather, who ran Cochrane’s Appliance. Even today, when Kim walks into an estimate, someone inevitably says, “Your grandfather sold me my first washer,” or “Your dad delivered our stove.”
Now, five decades after that first gallon of paint was poured, those connections still color every corner of her business. The Cochranes have always worked with their hands, but what they really build is trust.
The Detour That Led Her Home
Before she ever picked up a paint sprayer, Kim picked up a stick—field hockey, to be exact. At Biddeford High School she played her way to a state championship appearance, then on to four strong years at the University of Southern Maine. By junior year she was helping run study-hall workshops for incoming athletes, teaching them time management and balance. That experience led her to Springfield College for a master’s degree in athletic counseling, a blend of psychology, sport management, and mentorship that placed her inside Division I programs helping scholarship athletes navigate life beyond the field.
The decade that followed in sports was fulfilling, but exhausting: long hours, endless travel, constant motion. She burned out, and took a month long breather in Europe. Then she headed to Vail, Colorado, to ski and bartend, to live by one rule: no responsibilities heavier than deciding whether to ski or eat.
By February 2014, she missed purpose. Her father called and said, “Come home for the summer. Work for me. Figure it out.” She did. Two weeks later, she met Josh Coleman at a barbecue. She told him she was only in Maine for the summer. Eleven years later, she’s still here.
The painting business fit in ways she hadn’t expected. Crews became teams, customers became professors, job sites became playing fields. She apprenticed under her father for five years, learning both brushwork and bookkeeping, until one November day five years later he handed her the rest of the company outright. “You don’t need me,” he said. She protested. He smiled. “You got this.”
Half a Century of Craft
In 2025, Biddeford Painting turned fifty—a milestone that feels both monumental and humbling.
“Fifty years,” Kim says, shaking her head. “It’s wild. My dad started this company with a few brushes and a truck. Now we have a full crew, a warehouse, and a lot to be proud of.”
The company’s golden anniversary isn’t marked by fireworks or press releases. It’s celebrated in quiet ways: an extra coat of paint on the Little League concession stand, a discount for a nonprofit project, a dinner out with the crew to say thanks.
When asked how it feels to carry the torch, Kim pauses. “It means everything,” she says softly. “Dad built this with pride and heart. I just want to keep that going, to do things the right way, the way he taught me.”
The Women with Hammers, Brushes, and Plans
Kim leads a proudly women-owned company in a field that, not long ago, had very few women in the room. When she first attended a Painting Contractors Association conference ten years ago, she was one of maybe five women there. In October 2025, she joined 175 female contractors in Nashville for the Women in Paint conference, a milestone that speaks to how much has changed.
Across York County, Kim sees that same transformation happening locally. She points to women like Melinda Cobb of All Walks of Carpentry, Heather’s Plumbing, Jessica Jolin, the architect behind Mobile Home Design, and Christi Hissong, who is building high performance homes in Southern Maine. “It’s not that women do it better,” Kim says, “we just bring a different rhythm—detail, empathy, communication. We see the home the way a woman sees it.”
She’s proud to be part of a network of women who are shaping the trades in southern Maine—each of them proving, in their own way, that craftsmanship, leadership, and compassion can coexist.
Her empathy shows up not just in her projects but in her community work. Biddeford Painting is a fixture at local fundraisers, Chamber events, and Heart of Biddeford initiatives. When the mills hosted a gala in a blue-walled factory space, she and her crew painted the entire room white—for free—so it could shine. She’s helped hang banners, donated paint, and quietly sponsored improvements at Rotary Park and the Little League fields.
Earlier this year, the city noticed. Biddeford named her Volunteer of the Year. It was a moment that underscored how her impact goes far beyond paint and plaster.
Growth with a Purpose
Biddeford Painting became hers in 2019, but it still carries the same DNA: say yes, work hard, figure it out. Kim’s plans for growth are thoughtful, not flashy—new divisions for new construction, repaints, and exteriors; a possible Portland office; and more focus on emerging technologies in coatings, epoxies, and refinishing.
What excites her most is the next generation. “We’re the oldest state in the country,” she says, “and kids don’t always see the trades as art.” She hopes to change that—introducing painting into tech centers and showing students that precision, chemistry, and design all live within the trade.
Her sense of teaching extends far beyond paint cans. On fall evenings you’ll find her coaching field hockey for Biddeford Rec, a program she helped expand to forty girls and six volunteer coaches. The season recently ended with the Halloween Havoc tournament at Waterhouse Field—over four hundred players, every team in costume, her squad dressed as pirates. It’s chaotic, loud, and perfect.
Weekends in Color
Even on her days off, Kim moves at the rhythm of Biddeford itself.
For her family, joy is local — the small, salt-air kind of joy that doesn’t require a reservation or a long drive. “We love going to the Biddeford bathhouse,” she says. “It’s just a special spot. You can go for nice walks, check out all the crabs and the wildlife around you.”
When the paint cans are closed and the brushes are clean, you’ll likely find the Colemans gathered around a table somewhere nearby — The Lost Fire, The Pilot House, Hurricanes, The Dunn Bar or Magnus on Water," Kim says. “And we love Sacred Profane.”
Whether it’s a stroll through the sand or dinner under the hum of the mill lights, her favorite places aren’t escapes — they’re extensions of home. The same community she paints all week becomes the backdrop for her weekends.
Color That Lasts
Ask Kim for numbers, and she’ll laugh—but she knows them by heart. This year alone, Biddeford Painting has bought roughly 1,600 gallons of paint—averaging $50 per gallon. Some years she calculates how much area that covers and jokes that her team could paint most of Biddeford.
That math means something. Each gallon shields a home from the salt, rain, and time that tests every Maine house. And every job keeps alive the story that began with her grandfather’s truck in the 1950s, cruised through the bowling lanes of the ’70s, and sprays forward into 2025.
Because fifty years of painting is about more than pigment, it’s about longevity.
“You can do anything you want,” her father always said. “You’ve just got to figure out how to do it.”
Five decades in, Biddeford Painting still lives by that rule.
And Kim Cochrane-Coleman is just getting started.
Photographed and interviewed on November 3, 2025 by Cy Cyr.
Find Biddeford Painting online at www.biddefordpainting.com.
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