Exterior paint costs in Mobile

Mobile has seven local historic districts, from Oakleigh Garden and Detonti Square to Old Dauphin Way, and in them a repaint is the city's business too. Repaints show up on the Architectural Review Board's agendas among the approvals signed off between meetings, listed down to the paint brand and the body, trim and door colors. One recent agenda also carried an after-the-fact request to approve paint already put on a brick foundation, knee wall and porch piers. Getting your colors approved first is the easier road.

Outside the districts, age is what sets the job. Roughly 91,000 houses in and around Mobile, nearly half the total, were built before 1980, with the 1970s busiest of all. A house from then may carry several coats of old paint on its trim and eaves, and getting the loose layers off is slow, careful work.

Mobile is wet, too: the city's weather station collects about 67 inches a year. Wood swells when it's wet and shrinks when it dries, and every cycle works at the paint on top of it. A house that's gone a long time between paint jobs often needs a few boards replaced before it gets new color.