Service Area
Gainesville. Old houses, done properly.
I'm Pedro. Gainesville has more genuinely old houses than most towns around here, and they don't respond well to being rushed. I'd rather take the extra day and have the work hold.
Older Homes
Weatherboard and old wood need patience.
Gainesville is the Hall County seat, and it has the housing stock to show for it. The Green Street corridor has been a prestigious address since the 1880s—Neoclassical Revival, Queen Anne, Colonial Revival, Tudor, Craftsman bungalows, one after another on that high ground north of the square. Spread out from there and you find bungalows, English cottages, and solid old ranch homes all through the north and east side. The city has documented over two thousand historic or potentially historic properties. These are real old houses, not houses styled to look old.
Most of them are wood-framed with weatherboard siding, some brick-veneered. Old wood is not new wood. It's been through a hundred summers, it's had five or six coats put on it, and somewhere under there is a layer that's letting go. That siding and that original trim need scraping, sanding, and priming down to sound material before anything else happens. There's no version of this where you show up with a sprayer and finish by Friday. The prep is the job—the topcoat is just the last day of it.
If your home sits inside a designated historic district, there may be review requirements for exterior work. I won't tell you what your district asks for—I don't know your address yet, and I'd rather find out than guess. What I can tell you is that I'll work within whatever it turns out to be, and I'll help you get the color samples and details together for it.
The Order Of Things
How I work on an older home.
Same four steps every time, in this order. Skip one and the rest doesn't hold.
01Look at it first
I walk the whole house before I quote anything—soft wood, failing paint, seams that let water in.
02Prep is most of the job
Scraping, sanding, and priming bare wood is where the time goes. That's what makes paint last.
03Repair before paint
Rotten siding and trim get fixed, not covered up. Paint over bad wood and you've bought yourself a year.
04Paint that suits the house
Colors and finishes that fit the age of the home, not whatever happens to be on the shelf.
What I Handle
More than a paintbrush.
On a Gainesville house the work usually starts withpainting and turns into a bit of everything—rotted trim, a porch column that's gone soft, a bathroom that hasn't been touched since the seventies. I doremodeling andgeneral contractingas well, and the smaller fix-it work falls underhandyman. It's a small, trusted team, so you're not handing your old house to a rotating crew.
Gainesville is one stop on a short list—you can see the rest of the towns I cover over on theservice areas page, most of them a good deal closer to home than this one.
Photo neededWeatherboard siding on an older Gainesville home — scraped and primed, ready for topcoat
Questions
Questions about
older Gainesville homes
Not at all. It's roughly 25 minutes up I-985, and I'm up that way regularly. The drive is my problem, not yours—it doesn't change what an estimate costs you, which is nothing.
Free Estimates
Call Pedro.
If you've got an older Gainesville house and you're not sure what it needs, give me a call. I'll come up and walk it with you and tell you honestly what I'd do. No pressure, no obligation.