Delano's older in-town homes
Downtown Delano and the blocks around it were built over a long stretch, and the houses show it: two-story farmhouse styles and foursquares with wood clapboard, bungalows from the 1920s and 1930s, and postwar ramblers with a mix of wood lap and later hardboard. The old wood-sided homes are the ones that need real prep. A century of paint means thick, brittle layers that let go in sheets on the sunny south wall while holding fine on the shaded north side. Our approach on these is to scrape to a sound edge, feather-sand, prime every bit of bare wood with an oil or bonding primer, and caulk the joints that opened up as the house moved. Porch floors, columns and railings get their own look, because they take standing water and are usually the first thing rotten. We paint the trim by brush on these homes; a sprayed finish on old millwork looks wrong.
Crow River homes and the newer edges of town
The Crow River runs right through Delano, and the properties along it deal with river-bottom humidity and spring fog the way lake homes deal with dew. Siding on the river side stays damp longer, mildew shows up on the north wall, and decks over the bank take a beating. We wash those walls with a mildewcide and give them the extra drying day before primer. Out on the edges of town, where Delano grew in the 1990s and 2000s, the housing is a different problem. Two-story and split-level homes with hardboard or first-generation LP siding are now old enough that the factory finish has chalked, the bottom edges of the boards are swelling, and the caulk at the windows has split. Those homes need a wash, a hard look at the boards, and a full repaint before the swelling turns into replacement. The vinyl-sided homes from the same era can be painted too, in a color no darker than the original.
How we work in Delano
Delano is about 15 minutes southwest of our Rockford shop, down the county roads to Hwy 12, which is close enough that we run color samples and second looks without a long gap. The in-town lots are tight and the houses are close together, so we mask the neighbor's side as carefully as our customer's, and we keep the sprayer to siding where overspray can be controlled. Older homes in Delano can have lead paint under the top coats, and we prep those with the containment and cleanup the rule requires. Exterior season here runs from roughly May to mid-October. Anything structural we open up, from a rotten sill to a soft porch column, is repaired under our contractor license and priced as a separate line on the estimate so you can decide on it with full information.
Exterior painting in Delano
Delano's old wood-sided homes are the reason exterior painting is a prep trade before it is a color trade. Scraping, sanding, priming and caulking take most of the hours on these houses, and skipping any of it shows up as peeling in two summers. Our exterior painting page walks through each step and what changes the cost on an older home. How an exterior repaint goes, and what moves the cost. Rotten trim and siding get replaced first by our own crew under our contractor license, see rot and trim repair.
Interior painting and cabinets in Delano
Inside, Delano's older homes have plaster walls, tall painted trim and doors with a dozen coats on them. We repair cracked plaster, prime it, and repaint with brushed trim that keeps the profile sharp. In the newer subdivisions the interior work is the first real repaint after the builder's flat paint, plus sprayed cabinet enamel on early-2000s oak. Both run all winter. See interior painting and cabinet and trim enamel.
Where in Delano we work
- Downtown Delano
- Crow River
Services in Delano
Painting
- Exterior painting
- Interior painting
- Cabinet painting
- Staining and sealing
- Deck staining
- Commercial painting
Exteriors and build
Google reviewsWhat customers say
★★★★★Cedar Tone did an excellent job painting both our home’s interior and exterior. They went above and beyond by both repairing and staining the exterior siding. We’ve used them twice and would highly recommend them.
★★★★★I hired Cedar Tone to paint the outside of my home. They did a great job! The house looks just like I wanted it, they matched the existing paint color perfectly, cleaned up, and even rewashed my outside windows! I will be hiring them again!
Straight answersPainting questions from Delano
Can you paint a hundred-year-old wood-sided house in downtown Delano?
Yes, and those are some of the exteriors we like most. The work is scraping to a sound edge, sanding the edges flat, priming bare wood with a primer that bonds to old oil paint, caulking, and then two brushed or sprayed-and-back-brushed coats. Old wood houses almost always need some trim or sill replaced too, which we do under our contractor license. Expect more prep time than a newer home, and plan for it in the schedule.
Our Delano house is by the Crow River and the north side stays damp. Does that change the job?
It changes the order and the timing. The river side gets washed with a mildewcide first, then we leave it to dry a full extra day before we prime, and we schedule that wall for the driest days of the job. The rest of the house goes on the normal schedule. It is the same thing we do on lake homes around Buffalo and Greenfield, and it is the difference between paint that holds and paint that lifts by the second spring.
Is the hardboard siding on our 1990s Delano home worth painting, or does it need replacing?
Usually it is worth painting if the boards are still flat and hard. Hardboard fails from the bottom edge up, so we check the bottom courses and the boards under windows for swelling. Solid boards get a wash, sanding, primer on any bare spots and two coats. Swollen boards get replaced with new material before paint, which we do ourselves. A house with a few bad boards is a repaint; a house with a bad wall is a siding conversation.