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. That detail is why a repaint here takes longer and prices differently than the same square footage anywhere else in the valley.

Two kinds of house on the hill

Almost every Avenues repaint falls into one of two scopes. Wood-sided houses take a full-body repaint, and because the architecture carries so much detail, they are where multi-color period schemes come into their own. Brick houses take a trim-and-detail scope instead: the masonry is left alone and the work is all in the wood, which is a smaller job in square footage and a larger one in patience.

The single question that comes up on every brick house is whether the brick itself should be painted. The answer here is no, and the reasoning is technical rather than aesthetic.

Why unpainted brick stays unpainted

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. 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.
• Old paint. Every home in this bracket is pre-1978, so the prep runs contained rather than open: plastic below the work, controlled sanding, and a clean-up at the end of each day. See the pre-1978 homes 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.

What drives the number on an Avenues quote

Element count, not wall area. A suburban two-story is a few large planes and a handful of openings, most of which can be sprayed in long passes. A Queen Anne on the hill is hundreds of separate small pieces, and every piece has edges. Edges are brushwork at arm's length, at whatever height the piece happens to sit. Two houses with the same footprint, one on the hill and one in an eighties subdivision, are not the same job and have never priced like it.

That same count is what decides how many colors the house can wear. A scheme needs somewhere to put each color, and the brackets, spindlework, panel detail, and sash are the somewhere. Applied to a house without those elements the identical palette reads as noise rather than as a period scheme, which is why the color decision and the scope decision are really one decision.

Both are worth settling before the exterior season opens, since it only runs about five months here. The seasonal guide covers the calendar.

Capitol Hill and Marmalade sit on the same hill with the same building stock and the same decisions, so everything here reads across to those blocks too.

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