Exterior paint costs in St. Louis

The typical house in the city of St. Louis dates to 1938. More than half went up before 1940, and nearly six in ten across the whole metro predate 1980. On houses that old, the cornices, window frames and porch trim can carry decades of coats, and federal rules require lead-safe work from anyone paid to disturb paint on a home built before 1978.

Brick shapes the job too. In the Soulard Historic District, the city's standards prohibit painting masonry walls that have never been painted. They explain why: moisture builds up behind paint on brick and wears away the mortar joints. Brick that's already painted can be repainted. The same standards treat painting wood or metal trim, or repainting masonry in a color close to the brick, as general maintenance that needs no permit, and they call for the wood in a cornice to be painted.

So on a St. Louis brick house, a paint job is mostly a trim job: cornices, sashes, porches and doors, with the walls left alone. If your brick was painted years ago and is now peeling, the work grows, because loose paint on old masonry has to come off gently. That's careful hand work, and on a two- or three-story front it means ladders or scaffolding that a photo won't show.