Exterior painting.

What River Forest houses are made of

Most houses here are brick, which means a painting job is trim: soffits, fascia, window frames, sash, porch columns, doors. A few thousand square feet of wood, much of it thirty feet up. The frame houses near Harlem and the big stucco Prairie-style houses toward the river are whole-house jobs, and stucco has its own rules.

Everything was built before 1940, so everything has been painted a dozen times. Under the current color there are layers of oil paint from the 1950s and 1960s, alligatored and failing, and under those there is lead. That history sets the price of prep, and the law sets the way it has to be done.

Prep is the job

Paint fails when the surface under it fails. New paint over loose old paint peels with it. New paint over chalky, dirty wood does not bond. New paint over bare wood without primer soaks in and fails early.

Proper prep on old trim means washing, scraping every loose edge back to a sound surface, sanding the edges feathered so they do not telegraph through, priming every bare spot, caulking the joints, and sometimes filling and sanding again. On alligatored 1950s oil paint it can mean taking whole sections back to bare wood.

That is 60 to 80 percent of the labor on a trim job. It is also the part a low estimate quietly skips, because the homeowner cannot see it. Two estimates with the same paint and a $4,000 gap are usually two different amounts of scraping.

Lead-safe rules, and why they are not optional

Under the federal Renovation, Repair and Painting rule, any contractor disturbing more than a small area of painted surface on a pre-1978 house must be certified, use lead-safe work practices, and give you an EPA pamphlet before starting. Every house in River Forest qualifies.

In practice that means plastic sheeting on the ground under the work area, no open-flame stripping, no power sanding without HEPA vacuum attachment, wet scraping where feasible, containment of chips, and cleanup verification. It slows the work down and it costs more. It is also the difference between a paint job and a lead-dust event in the garden beds where your tomatoes grow.

Ask for the company's EPA certification number and the name of the certified renovator who will be on site. A contractor who says "we do not really worry about that on exteriors" is describing a violation, not a shortcut.

Reading the estimate, row by row

Line these rows up across every estimate you collect. Where two of them differ, that is where the price difference usually lives.

Prep and repairs. Spelled out step by step. "Prep as needed" is not a scope.

Lead-safe practices. Certification number, containment method, cleanup.

Primer. Which product, and where: bare wood only, or everything.

Paint product and coats. Brand and line by name, sheen, and the number of finish coats. Two is the standard for a warranty that means anything.

Surfaces included. Every surface, named. Garage, fence, porch ceiling, storm windows and the back of the house are the usual omissions.

Primer, paint and coats

Primer bonds to the surface and gives the finish coat something to grip. On bare or weathered wood, an oil-based or specialty bonding primer is standard. On sound existing paint, a full prime coat is sometimes skipped in favor of spot priming, which is legitimate if the existing paint is sound and stated.

Finish paint on exteriors here is almost always a 100 percent acrylic latex from a major manufacturer's top or second line. The product matters less than the number of coats. One coat of the best paint made covers unevenly and wears through at the edges in three years. Two coats is the job.

Sheen is a choice, not a spec. Satin on trim hides more; semi-gloss on doors and sash cleans better. Ask, but do not let it distract from coats.

Carpentry and the rot conversation

Scraping finds rot. Window sills, the bottom of porch columns, the ends of fascia boards, the corner of a soffit under a failed gutter. It is not the painter's fault and it is not optional; painting over rot seals the water in.

What matters is how the estimate handles it. The good ones carry an allowance, a number of hours or a dollar figure for carpentry, and an hourly rate beyond it. The thin ones say nothing, and the conversation happens on the third day with the crew standing there and the paint bought. Ask up front: what happens when you find rot, and what does it cost?

Epoxy consolidants and fillers handle small areas well. Larger sections get replaced, ideally with a rot-resistant wood or a composite, primed on all sides before installation.

Stucco and masonry coatings

The stucco Prairie-style houses toward Thatcher are a different job. Stucco is porous and it moves. It wants a breathable masonry coating or an elastomeric paint designed to bridge hairline cracks, not standard house paint, and cracks wider than a hairline need patching with a compatible stucco mix first.

If your stucco has never been painted, think hard before starting. Once it is coated, it is coated forever. Some owners choose a clear breathable water repellent instead. Ask a contractor who works on stucco specifically, not one who "does stucco too."

Weather, timing and the calendar

Exterior paint needs surfaces above about 50 degrees, including overnight, and dry for a day or two before and after. In River Forest that means mid-May through early October, with June and September as the reliable months. A crew booked for April is gambling on the weather with your paint.

Good painters fill their calendar early. If you want a specific month, be talking in February.

What drives the price

Surface area first: brick house trim versus full frame is a factor of two to three. Then prep condition, which sets the hours. Then height and access: a three-story Tudor with dormers needs staging that a bungalow does not. Then lead-safe containment, which adds to every day. Paint is last, and it is a few hundred dollars either way.

Warranties, and what five years covers

A painting warranty covers peeling, blistering and flaking caused by the work, not fading, not mildew, and not failure over rot or over surfaces the estimate excluded. Most run two to five years. A five-year warranty on a one-coat job is a promise the contractor does not intend to keep, or one they expect you to forget. Read the exclusions.

Red flags

• "Prep as needed," or prep described in one line.
• No EPA certification number, or lead rules waved off.
• One coat, or the number of coats not stated.
• No carpentry allowance or rate.
• A clear sealer proposed for unpainted stucco or brick without discussion.
• A start date in April.

Questions to ask

• Walk me through the prep, surface by surface.
• What is your EPA Lead-Safe certification number, and who is the certified renovator on my job?
• Which primer, where, and how many finish coats?
• What happens when you find rot, and what does it cost per hour?
• Which surfaces are excluded?
• What exactly does the warranty cover, and for how long?
• When can you actually start, and what if it rains?

The short list

Prep spelled out. Lead certification on the page. Two coats. Carpentry allowance. Every surface named. Warranty exclusions read. That is a painting estimate you can compare, and it is the difference between a job that lasts eight years and one that peels before the next Memorial Day parade.

Permits, programs and the Village