Cedar is common across the older north-shore housing and it is the substrate that punishes shortcuts hardest. Under a mature tree canopy it holds moisture, and paint put over a damp or rotted board hides a problem rather than solving it. We find and repair the soft boards first. Aluminum siding is a different problem entirely: it chalks, and coating straight over the chalk gives you a finish that comes off in sheets. Each substrate has a process, and using the wrong one is how a repaint fails early.
Scoped in writing before anything is booked, with the surfaces, the products and the number of coats named so you can compare it against anything else you have been quoted.
The Lake County painting year
Interior work runs every month. Exterior is weather dependent, so the spring slots go first.
Cedar
Cedar is worth treating differently because it behaves differently, and the two things that go wrong on cedar are both predictable.
Tannin bleed. Cedar is full of natural tannins, and water moving through the wood carries them to the surface. On a light-coloured finish that shows as brown or rust staining, usually appearing weeks after the job looks perfect. The prevention is a stain-blocking primer on every bare or exposed area — not a general primer, a stain-blocking one. This is the single most common cedar failure and it is entirely avoidable.
Cupping and movement. Cedar moves with moisture more than most siding. Boards cup, nail heads back out, and joints open and close through the season. Film-forming finishes fight that movement and eventually crack at the edges. Penetrating stains move with it.
Rough sawn versus smooth. Rough-sawn cedar holds far more finish per square foot and takes noticeably longer to coat. If your quote came in higher than a neighbour's for a similar-sized house, that is often why.
Age matters. Cedar that has weathered grey has lost its surface fibre. It needs cleaning and often brightening before anything goes on, or the finish bonds to loose fibre rather than to wood.
Choice
This is the decision that determines the next twenty years of maintenance on the house, so it is worth taking seriously.
Semi-transparent stain lets the cedar show, moves with the wood, and wears rather than peels. Recoating is a clean and reapply — no stripping. On the shaded and lakefront elevations through Highland Park, Lake Forest and Lake Bluff it needs attention sooner than the sunny sides.
Solid stain gives full colour and much better UV protection while still being more flexible than paint. A good middle path for cedar that has already weathered unevenly.
Paint gives the widest colour range and the crispest look, and on cedar it is a real commitment. It forms a film, and on a substrate that moves seasonally that film eventually cracks and lets water behind it. Once cedar is painted, going back to stain means stripping the whole house.
Going from stain to paint is easy. Going back is not. If you are undecided, stain keeps your options open.
Exposure changes the answer by elevation. A south wall in full Lake County sun and a north wall that holds mildew are different problems on the same house, and it is normal for them to need attention on different schedules.
Around the county
Cedar shows up across Lake County in two distinct waves and they need different things. The mid-century and seventies houses through Deerfield, Riverwoods, Long Grove, Lincolnshire and Bannockburn were often built with rough-sawn cedar as the primary siding, and many are on their third or fourth finish by now. Those need honest assessment of what is already on the wall before anything else is decided. The lakefront and near-lake houses in Highland Park, Highwood, Lake Forest and Lake Bluff take considerably more wind-driven moisture and grow mildew on the north and east elevations every single year, which means the shaded sides need attention on a shorter cycle than the sunny ones. Inland, through Mundelein, Grayslake, Libertyville and Vernon Hills, cedar is more often accent work — gables, dormers and entry surrounds rather than whole-house siding — and those jobs are smaller and simpler. Wherever it is, the two failure modes are the same: tannin bleed where a stain-blocking primer was skipped, and film cracking where a rigid finish was put on wood that moves.
How it works
We look at the surfaces, not just the rooms. Prep is what the number is built from, so it is what gets measured.
You get the surfaces, the products, the number of coats and the price in writing before anything is booked.
Interior any month. Exterior inside the season, not squeezed into the end of it.
We walk the finished work with you under real light and fix anything on the list before the final invoice.
By town
Towns we serve
Service area
Text a photo of the room or the elevation and we will scope it, or call and we will walk it through with you.
Questions
By surface area and by the amount of preparation the surfaces need, which is the part that varies most between two houses that look similar. A wall that needs washing, filling, sanding and priming is several times the work of one that needs a coat. You get the scope in writing — surfaces, products, number of coats — so you can compare quotes on the same basis rather than on a single number.
Interior work runs all year, and January through March is the easiest time of year to book. Exterior work is weather dependent and needs surface temperature and dryness within range, so it runs roughly April through October in Lake County. We would rather tell you to wait for spring than put a coat on in November that fails by summer.
A single room is usually a day or two. A whole-house interior runs one to two weeks depending on how much trim and how much prep. A full exterior is typically one to two weeks, and the weather decides more than the crew does. You get a schedule up front, and you are told when it moves.
No. Interior work is done room by room so the house stays livable, and each room is put back at the end of each day rather than at the end of the job. If a kitchen is being refinished you will lose the use of the cabinets for a few days, and we plan that with you rather than around you.
Text a photo of the room or the elevation and we will scope it. Fastest way to a number.
Text a photoCall (224) 706-1302