Exterior paint costs in Spartanburg

The houses in Spartanburg's Hampton Heights went up between about 1890 and 1930, and the neighborhood's National Register nomination describes them as mostly single-family frame homes. One house from around 1902 has narrow weatherboard on the first floor and sawtooth shingles on the second. A wall like that is slow to paint well. The shingle edges and the gaps between them need brush work that a sprayer can't do alone, and the weatherboard laps each need their bottom edge coated.

The nomination also shows how the neighborhood filled in. Big two- and two-and-a-half-story frame houses for upper-income families went up along West Hampton Avenue from about 1890 to 1910. Upper-middle-income houses followed through about 1920, and middle-income houses filled streets like Peronneau and Hydrick. Of some 142 properties, 120 count toward the district's historic character. One house on West Hampton has a porch on brick piers with simulated rustication, so a paint job there means wood above and masonry below.

Across the metro, four in ten homes date from before 1980. Upstate air is wet as well as warm: the regional airport in Greer records just under 50 inches of precipitation in a normal year. Porch floors, rail tops and the bottom edges of weatherboard hold that water longest, and they're usually the first places a repaint has to begin with repairs.