Exterior paint costs in Scranton

For four months straight, December through March, the normal daytime high at the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton airport in Avoca stays under 50°F. That's the simplest way to see why exterior painting around Scranton is a warm-weather trade.

The houses explain the rest. Close to nine in ten Scranton homes went up before 1980, and more than half before 1940. That's a lot of wood siding and trim with generations of paint on it, and on a house that old, the paint isn't one coat. It's a stack of them, and old stacks are what crack and let go.

So on an old Scranton house, the prep is the job. Peeling paint, flaking trim and bare gray wood all need scraping, priming and some repair, and that work takes longer than the painting itself. Winter adds wear of its own. The airport collects about 43 inches of snow in an average year, and wet snow sitting on sills and porch floors is hard on whatever paint is left there.