"how many people out there dont know how to maintain a plaster wall, a historic window, or a stone foundation?" Someone on r/cincinnati asked that on Reddit. If you own an older house in Hyde Park, you've asked the same thing about paint. Your house isn't one surface. One wall can carry brick, stucco, wood trim, wood windows and a porch, with copper and slate overhead. Each one takes different prep. Treat them all the same and some spots fail years before the rest.

So before anyone prices your house, read it yourself.

What's actually on an older Hyde Park house

Start with age. In ZIP 45208, which takes in Hyde Park, 4,663 of the 9,027 homes were built in 1939 or earlier, and 5,921 before 1960, according to the Census Bureau's American Community Survey. That's a ZIP number, not a neighborhood number, but it gives you the picture.

The styles vary street to street. The American Planning Association lists Italianate, Queen Anne, Eastlake, Shingle and Colonial Revival in Hyde Park, and the City of Cincinnati says early high-style Colonial Revival houses went up there. The City also names Hyde Park among the neighborhoods with a large number of Tudor Revival houses, built of brick, rubble stone and stuccoed half-timbering, with slate or tile roofs. In the Observatory Historic District, a small cluster of about a dozen houses, a City document describes frame houses with wood clapboard and stucco as the most common siding, slate or asphalt roofs, original wood multi-pane windows, and wood porches with decorative railing and post details.

Walk around your house with a notepad. Write down every material you see, and whether it's painted, stained or bare. That list is your prep list.

Tudor: brick, stone, stucco and timber on one wall

A Tudor Revival house can put four materials on a single elevation. The City's style page says the timbers are filled in with stone or brick and usually stuccoed.

Stucco first. The National Park Service's Preservation Brief 22 says most stucco damage comes from water getting into the wall, and cracks are how it gets in. Small hairline cracks usually aren't serious, but they should be sealed before they grow. The brief also says store-bought caulk is the wrong material for stucco hairlines. Before repainting, all loose and peeling paint has to come off, and the new paint has to be compatible with whatever coating is already there. Ask any painter what's on your stucco now and what they plan to put over it.

The half-timber trim is wood, and it gets wood prep. The weak spot is the joint where timber meets stucco. Water sits there, and it's often where paint lets go first.

Unpainted brick and stone are a separate call. Painting them is a one-time decision, not maintenance. More on that in the FAQ.

Colonial Revival and Victorian-era wood

Another Cincinnati poster on Reddit described the usual trouble in one line: "wood rot on window frames and the bottom of the gingerbread on the front porch." On a wood house, nearly every paint problem traces back to water or to old paint.

The NPS's Preservation Brief 10, on paint problems on exterior woodwork, says peeling down to bare wood is most often caused by moisture collecting behind the paint, and there's no sense repainting before the moisture is dealt with. It also says once paint builds past about 1/16 inch, 16 to 30 layers, one more coat can be enough to set off cracking and peeling. The USDA Forest Products Laboratory says cross-grain cracking often shows up on older homes painted many times, and its fix is removing the old paint and starting over on bare wood.

That isn't always the answer. Brief 10 says when only the top layers are failing, scrape to the next sound layer using the gentlest means possible, then repaint. So the real questions on an old wood house are where the water is coming from, how thick the paint is, and whether it's failing at the top or all the way down.

Check the joints and board ends too. The Forest Products Lab says end grain soaks up water much faster than the face of a board, and finishes generally fail there first. Porch posts, railing ends and the bottoms of window trim are where to look.

Painted brick

If your brick is already painted, it's a painted surface now, and the question is whether the paint on it suits brick. The NPS says painting brick with non-permeable paint can speed decay by trapping moisture behind the coating, and that a water-permeable coating works best if brick has to be coated at all. Its brief on cleaning masonry adds that old paint on masonry can build up until removal is the only way to get a sound surface.

Look for white powder on the face of the brick, which is salt carried out by moisture. Look for paint bubbling at the base of the wall and for open mortar joints. The NPS names leaking roofs, clogged gutters, missing mortar and open joints as the usual sources of a wet wall. Those come first, or new paint just traps the same water.

Three Hyde Park jobs, three materials

On one Hyde Park house we painted dark red-brown brick white. It had a gray slate roof with dormers, a covered back porch and cream window trim. Windows were taped, drop cloths ran along the wall, and ladders went up to the upper courses of brick. On another, the dormers sit over a copper and slate roof. We covered the glass and the roof edge with paper and blue tape so the work stayed off the slate and the copper, and the brick chimney was painted white. On a third, arched wood double doors in a pale brick archway went from light tan to a deep red-brown, with the sill taped and the floor covered at the base.

You can see more of our exterior painting work in Hyde Park.

What doesn't work on an old house

One product and one process for every surface. A crew that washes, sprays and leaves treats stucco, brick and century-old wood like new vinyl. Caulk smeared over stucco hairlines. Paint over peeling wood with the gutter still leaking. And coatings sold as maintenance-free. The NPS's Preservation Brief 47 warns that some approaches that seem to cut maintenance can actually speed up deterioration over time.

When to call a painter, and what to ask

Call before the failure spreads: paint peeling to bare wood, cracks opening in stucco, paint lifting off brick. Then ask every painter who walks your house:

  • What's on each surface now, and what goes over it?
  • Where do you think the water is coming from?
  • What gets scraped, and how far down?
  • Who repairs rotted wood, and does that happen before paint?
  • How will you protect the roof, copper, windows and plantings?
  • Who's actually on the job from start to finish?

Here's our side. Wells Painting is owner-operated with no subcontractors, and Denny is on every job. The same guys prep and paint. Denny has painted for 20 years, and he spent 8 years working under his mentor in Indian Hill and Hyde Park, mostly on high-end homes. You get one total price covering labor, materials and prep, with the scope explained. Exterior house painting carries a three-year warranty. A larger, detailed home usually takes 2 to 4 weeks, depending on size and prep. Read more about how our exterior house painting works.

Questions owners ask about older Hyde Park houses

Can one painter handle brick, stucco and wood on the same house?

Yes, if they prep each one for what it is. Ask them to walk you through every material before they price it. If the plan sounds the same for brick, stucco and wood, keep looking.

Do I need a carpenter for rotted porch trim before painting?

If the wood is soft, it has to be repaired or replaced before paint goes on. Paint won't hold on rot. Ask your painter who handles it and whether it's in the scope.

Should I paint brick that's never been painted?

Once brick is painted, it becomes a surface you keep repainting. The NPS says that if brick has to be coated, a water-permeable coating works best, and any moisture problem gets fixed before anything goes on.

Want someone to walk your house and tell you what each surface needs? Estimates are free. Call (513) 849-5909 or reach us through our contact page.