House painters in Libertyville, IL

Four eras of construction, four sets of problems. Here's what each one needs.

Pre-war Libertyville: Copeland Manor and the blocks near downtown

Copeland Manor was going up in the 1920s, while the village grew from 2,125 residents in 1920 to 3,791 in 1930. The houses that survive from that era are wood: clapboard and shingle siding, milled trim and original double-hung sashes, with plaster walls behind them.

On houses this age the work is prep, not paint. Original glazing putty on the sashes fails and drops out; old caulk lines go hard and split; plaster cracks along the lath. Coating over any of it buys a couple of years at most. Sound repaints on these homes mean stripping back to solid material, re-glazing where the putty's gone, and skim-coating plaster flat before any finish coat.

Watch for: failed glazing, split caulk, and cracks running along the lath.

Post-war and mid-century (1940s–1960s)

Roughly a quarter of the village's housing dates from 1940 to 1969; Copeland Manor School was built in 1957 as those blocks filled in. Expect a mix of wood and early aluminum siding, some painted steel casement windows, and the first generation of drywall.

Aluminum siding is the one most often done wrong. After decades of Midwest sun it chalks, and paint rolled over chalk lets go in sheets within a year or two. It has to be washed and de-chalked, then coated with a bonding primer, never just scuffed and painted.

Watch for: chalking on aluminum siding and tired painted-steel casements.

The 1970–1999 majority: Cambridge, Greentree, Bull Creek, Red Top, Interlaken, Riva Ridge, Timber Creek, Ashbury Woods

More than half of Libertyville's homes were built in these three decades: Cambridge Homes' Cambridge subdivision from the late 1960s into the 70s, about 330 Miller Builders homes in Greentree in the late 1970s, the Interlaken subdivisions through the late 1980s, Riva Ridge's 325 townhouses, and 1990s neighborhoods like Timber Creek and Ashbury Woods. Typical for the era: cedar and engineered-wood siding, long soffit and fascia runs, and a lot of south- and west-facing walls that have taken thirty-plus Midwest summers.

Cedar goes first at the bottom courses and behind the gutters. Engineered board fails at cut ends and butt joints where the factory seal was never renewed. Both are repairable on a repaint, and both cost far more to ignore than to prime and seal now.

Watch for: bottom-course rot, open butt joints, and failing fascia.

2000s and newer: Wineberry and Cambridge Knoll

About one home in eight was built in 2000 or later, including Wineberry's larger custom homes and Cambridge Homes' 25-home Cambridge Knoll. Newer fiber-cement and vinyl-clad exteriors need the least structural prep, but they still need proper cleaning and the right primer for the substrate. "New enough to skip prep" is how the first repaint fails early.

Watch for: skipped cleaning and the wrong primer for the substrate.

One thing spans every era here: more than a third of Libertyville's homes predate 1978, so the paint underneath is often lead-based. On any pre-1978 house, disturbing old paint should be done carefully and contained, and it is worth asking any contractor how they handle it before work starts.

Siding, trim, fascia, doors and decks, with the prep matched to the house: re-glazing and careful stripping on the 1920s homes, de-chalking and bonding primer on aluminum, rot repair and sealed joints on 1970s through 1990s cedar and engineered wood.