Historic Home Exterior Makeover

About the Project

1. The customer is finishing renovations on the exterior of the home, including replacing much of the siding. He’ll be painting the home in new colors to give it a fresh look and beautiful curb appeal in accordance with the Boulder Historic Preservation. This home is known as the Henry Fulton House.
2. This home was built before 1978 and is presumed to have lead paint on it. As a result, we will need to follow mandated EPA lead safe practices. This is extensive in terms of additional preparation time as we are not legally allowed to do certain things like pressure wash or sand older surfaces. We will wear PPE, use plastic as regulated, keep windows/doors closed while disturbing paint, etc. This does add a meaningful cost to the project, and this is already reflected in the proposal pricing.
3. Extensive preparation is needed on this home. Particular attention will be paid to the preparation and painting of your wood windows. There will be a lot of hand scraping and priming to do. Due to the nature of lead-based paint, we will hand scrape loose paint, prime bare wood, then “lifting” can occur where previously well-adhered areas can come loose off the siding (due to the bonding primer drying and pulling the old siding paint). We will make one additional pass around the home to scrape and prime the “lifted” areas before we start applying the finish product.
4. Wood window preparation includes scraping any loose or peeling paint, spot filling as needed with a product like MH Ready Patch or similar, applying a high-quality bonding primer (BM Stix), and then painting. This process will ensure a solid, long-lasting finish, but it’s important to note that we won’t be performing a full restoration of the windows—just the necessary prep and paint to get them looking great.
5. We will follow nationally mandated EPA lead-safe practices for containment purposes. These practices are meant to help contain the spreading of paint chips or dust. As part of that, we will also not power wash the home to avoid spreading paint chips.
6. We’ll be using an oil-based primer on the new cedar shingle siding because to effectively seal the natural tannins in the wood, preventing any bleed-through into the topcoat. This ensures a longer-lasting finish and better adhesion of the final paint layer.
7. There is some spray foam insulation protruding from the newly installed wood shingles. We will cut/scrape this from the shingles as part of our preparation.
8. All cracks and gaps in the soffits and fascia where previous caulking has failed will be re-caulked to help mitigate any penetration of water behind your new paint. All badly recessed nail heads that are deemed to pose a threat to the integrity of your siding will be caulked. We will use premium caulking to help extend the caulk life as long as possible in the Colorado climate.