Trim, fascia and garage doors

What the work is

Trim fails before the field of the wall does, every time. It is usually a different material, it is often a different color, and the horizontal surfaces take sunlight for more of the day than any wall does. A house whose body is still sound can have fascia that is chalking and garage doors that have faded two shades.

That makes trim-only repainting one of the better-value jobs available: it is the part that reads as tired from the street, and it is a fraction of a full exterior. We will tell you honestly when a house needs the whole envelope instead.

Garage doors deserve their own note, because they are usually steel, usually face the street, and are frequently the largest single colored surface on the front of the house. They also get hot, which means they get coated early in the day and not at four in the afternoon.

Where we find rot in fascia or a sill, you hear about it before it gets painted. Coating rotten wood is the most common way a small repair becomes a large one two years later.

Why the trim goes first here

The normal daily high in St. George is 101.9°F in July and 99.9°F in August, on NOAA's 1991 to 2020 normals for the city's own weather station. Fascia, eaves and garage doors take that sun for more hours a day than any wall does, and horizontal surfaces take it longest of all.

The federal wood laboratory measured what that asymmetry does: paint on the north side of a building lasts twice as long as paint on the south. Which is a practical point, not a curiosity. The sides of your house are not on the same schedule, and quoting them as though they are means overcharging for two of them.

It also decides the hour we work. A steel garage door facing west is coated in the morning, because by afternoon its surface is well past the temperature its manufacturer publishes.