1890s Queen Anne, Elm Street ·
A Queen Anne in three colours
Forty years of white paint peeling off the clapboard. Stripped back where it had failed, lead-safe from start to finish, and painted in the three colours the house was built to wear.
- What we painted
- Siding, trim, porch, shutters and the front door
- Days on site
- 11 days
- Coats
- Lead-safe prep, primer + two coats
- Cost
- $18,400 all in
Colour schedule
- Body: Lichen
- Trim: Parchment
- Door and sashes: Damson
The owners found a scrap of the original colours under a porch bracket: a soft green body, a cream trim and a deep red-purple on the door. Forty years of white had been painted over them, and the lowest layers were letting go.
We tested for lead before anything else and worked lead-safe throughout: plastic down, wet scraping, HEPA sanding and a daily clean-up. Failed paint came back to sound wood, bare wood was primed, and every board got two coats. Tess matched the three colours to the scrap, and the house wears them again.