Meet Your Charlottesville Team

Michael Lally & Stephen Rutherford

Stephen was born and raised in Charlottesville. The son of entrepreneurial parents, who moved from California in the mid 70's to open a local hotspot deli named, "As You Like It".
Upon graduation from Charlottesville High School, he continued his education at James Madison University ('01) where he earned a BBA in Management. After college he jumped into the management track, working for Sherwin-Williams, the world's largest paint manufacturer. Around this time Stephen married his high school sweetheart, Angie, and they began raising their own family. They are the proud parents of a daughter, son and a few pups too.
Stephen started with Sherwin-Williams in their management training program and managing stores was fun, but after developing a taste for sales...the rest was history. Stephen went on to spend over 15 years in outside sales for Sherwin-Williams consistently growing his territory annually.
Eventually, Stephen took this passion for sales to the contracting world, assisting in the start-up phase of a deck building and refinishing company and then on to property management where he took on a lease-up of a new residential building in the spring of 2020. This lead him back to his roots in paint, where he joined Michael working for a local painting contractor. This experience led the two down a path to open their own shop and start producing the type of high quality, detail-oriented work they pride themselves on.

Michael was raised on military bases around the world. The youngest son of a now retired Army Officer and elementary school teacher, moving regularly earlier in life was par for the course. The Lally’s eventually settled in Northern Virginia, before Michael attended high school and then started college. Michael and his wife Adrianne married in 2011, and moved to Charlottesville where they started their family, now the proud parents of 2 daughters.
Michael graduated from George Mason University, with BA in Communication and minor in Economics. He started his career with Sherwin-Williams in 2006 working his way up while acting as an Operations Manager in a commercial facility and going on to manage his own facilities in Gainesville, Stephen’s City, Waynesboro and Charlottesville, VA. In Charlottesville, Michael’s role as Zone Manager included training and on-boarding local outside sales representatives and in-store associates. He was also responsible for managing overall operations of 2 facilities in Charlottesville while helping to shape and implement the overall market sales strategy. In 2019, Michael crossed the counter and joined a local painting contractor working as a residential/commercial estimator and project manager for roughly 3 years.
A longtime dream was finally able to be realized at the beginning of 2023, when Michael joined his longtime colleague and friend Stephen in opening Five Star Painting of Charlottesville.