Exterior Painting in Gainesville, TX

Exterior painting for Gainesville homes

Exterior painting in Gainesville, TX covers houses that run from Victorians near the courthouse to postwar and newer homes, and each brings its own exterior challenges. Sun, freeze and water all work on paint, and the joints, sills and porch floors are where failures usually start.

Gainesville's average July high is about 93 degrees, January nights average just under freezing, and the town gets close to 43 inches of precipitation a year.

South Gainesville's Victorian homes

The South Gainesville Residential District, roughly bounded by Dixon, Pecan, Denton and Tennie Streets, is one of the most intact groups of late 1800s and early 1900s houses in the state. The architecture reference SAH Archipedia describes it, together with the courthouse square, as one of the best period ensembles in Texas. Most of the homes there were designed and built between about 1885 and 1913 by John Grundy Garrett, a self-taught builder and architect who arrived from Mississippi in 1884.

These houses are not simple to paint. The district includes Queen Anne, Italianate, Palladian and Gothic Revival designs, with features such as:

• Corner towers with conical roofs
• Wraparound porches with turned posts and Tuscan or Composite columns
• Bracketed eaves and elaborate stick work in the gables
• Palladian windows and decorative trim on every elevation

One Queen Anne cottage on Church Street is noted for the way its red brick foundation sets off the soft green of its wood siding and trim. That kind of color scheme is a big part of what makes the neighborhood special, and it only works when the trim is crisp and the prep is careful.

Prep on old wood

Wood trim and siding from this era can carry many layers of paint. Turned posts, spindles and brackets have endless edges for water to get behind. The work starts with scraping loose paint, sanding, filling and patching, caulking open joints and priming bare wood. That prep is written into your estimate in detail, because on a Victorian it is most of the job.

Body, trim and accent colors

Victorian houses were often painted in more than one or two colors, and South Gainesville's mix of brackets, spindles, window sashes, porch ceilings and gable trim gives plenty of places for an accent. A good scheme decides early which parts carry the body color, which carry the trim color and which, if any, get a third accent. Looking at samples on the actual siding in morning and afternoon light helps, because strong Texas sun changes how a color reads. Every color and where it goes is written into the estimate.

Gainesville red brick

Several of the district's best-known homes are red brick, including the 1894 Potter-Portman House with its conical tower and wraparound porch and a c. 1890 house described as built of Gainesville red brick. On homes like these, many owners keep the original brick and focus paint on the porches, trim, windows, doors and wood siding, choosing colors that work with the brick. Others choose to paint the brick as well. Either way, the plan is built around the house.

The Morton Museum promotes a Historic South Gainesville Home Tour each December, a sign of how much these exteriors matter to the town.

Brick ranches and newer homes

Outside the historic district, where a Gainesville home pairs brick walls with painted trim, fascia, soffits, doors and garage doors, those painted parts take the full force of the Texas sun and the rain runoff from the roof. Fresh trim paint and a new door color protect the wood and change how the whole house looks from the street.

How a Gainesville exterior job is planned

Every project starts with a walk around the house. The written scope covers:

• Each surface to be painted, including porch ceilings, columns and decorative trim
• Prep: scraping, sanding, patching, caulking and priming where needed
• Colors, sheen, primer and paint, including how many trim colors are used
• Protection for plants, walkways and porch items
• Daily and final cleanup

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• Exterior painting
• Brick house painting
• Trim, fascia and soffit painting
• Wood siding painting