Painting a historic home in the Avenues

The Avenues climbs the hill north and east of downtown Salt Lake City and holds one of the densest concentrations of nineteenth and early twentieth century housing in the state. Victorians, Queen Anne cottages, bungalows, and early foursquares stand side by side, many with the original wood detail still intact. The neighborhood is a designated local historic district, and that designation carries obligations that do not apply elsewhere in the valley.

What local designation means

In a Salt Lake City local historic district, changes to the exterior of a property that are visible from the street go through the city's design review process, and many require a Certificate of Appropriateness before work starts. The purpose is to keep alterations compatible with the character of the district and the individual building.

Repainting is generally the gentlest case. Painting surfaces that are already painted, in a scheme consistent with the building's character, is ordinarily treated as maintenance rather than an alteration. Where homeowners run into the process is when the work changes something material about the building's appearance, and the classic example in Salt Lake City is masonry.

The unpainted brick rule

Salt Lake City's preservation guidance is unusually direct on this point: unpainted historic masonry, brick, stone, terracotta, and adobe, should remain unpainted. The reasoning is technical rather than aesthetic.

Historic brick is porous by design. It takes up moisture and releases it again as the wall dries outward. A coating over that face interferes with the drying, and moisture that cannot escape moves to where it can, or freezes in place. In a climate that crosses freezing more than a hundred times a winter, water trapped just behind the brick face freezes, expands, and pushes the face off the brick. That is spalling, and it is not repairable with paint. It is also effectively irreversible in the other direction, because stripping paint from historic brick is difficult, expensive, and capable of causing its own damage.

So on an Avenues brick home, the paint scope is the wood: fascia, soffits, eaves, window frames and sashes, sills, porch posts, railings, balustrades, brackets, and doors. It is careful, detailed work, and it transforms the appearance of the house without touching the masonry.

Wood-sided Victorians

Plenty of Avenues homes are wood-sided rather than brick, and these take full-body repaints. They are also where period color schemes come into their own. A Queen Anne or Eastlake house can carry three, four, or more colors: a body color, a trim color, a sash color, and accent colors picking out brackets, spindlework, and panel detail.

Multi-color schemes cost more than two-color work, and the reason is cut lines. Every additional color adds masking, brushwork, and drying sequence. It is worth understanding that before comparing a period-scheme quote against a suburban repaint number.

Details that come with age

• Glazing putty. Original wood sashes hold their glass with putty that hardens and falls out over a century. Re-glazing the loose sections is normal within a thorough trim repaint.
• Layered paint. A hundred and twenty years of repaints build thickness that obscures detail and cracks in patterns. Sound layers stay; failing ones come off and get feathered.
• Lead. Every home in this bracket is pre-1978, so lead-safe practices under Utah's state program apply to all of the prep. See the Utah lead paint guide.
• Soft wood. Sills and porch elements that have taken a century of weather sometimes need consolidation or piece replacement before paint. Better to find it during prep than after.

Practical sequence for an Avenues repaint

1. Confirm whether the property is in the local historic district and what the current guidance says for the specific work.
2. Settle the scheme early, particularly if the colors are changing meaningfully from what is there.
3. Get the quote written with prep, lead-safe practices, re-glazing, and any wood repair itemized.
4. Book the season. Avenues work is exterior work, so the mid-May to mid-October window applies.

Other Salt Lake City neighborhoods carry local district designation as well, and Capitol Hill and Marmalade sit under similar guidance. The city's preservation pages are the authority on which properties are covered and what the current standards say.

For the technical side of the brick question across the whole valley, not just historic districts, see the brick home trim guide.