Three eras of Wayzata houses
The neighborhoods tell you the era. Ferndale Road, Bushaway Road and Locust Hills hold the old lake estates and the cottages that grew up around them, many from the 1920s through the 1940s: stucco, lap siding, divided-light windows, plaster walls and a lot of painted wood trim inside. Holdridge, Highcroft, Gleason Lake and the Wayzata Highlands are mostly post-war, 1950s through 1970s colonials and ramblers with cedar, hardboard and sometimes aluminum siding, on wooded lots. Then there are the rebuilds, often on legacy parcels in those same streets, usually fiber cement or LP with black windows and white interiors. Downtown along Lake Street is condos and townhomes. We paint all four kinds and each needs different prep; on a 1920s house the plaster and the old trim are the whole job.
Wayzata Bay weather and old houses
Wayzata sits on the north shore of Wayzata Bay, so the lake-facing houses along Lake Street, Ferndale and Bushaway get the reflected sun and wind that any Lake Minnetonka home gets, while the streets uphill from the bay are under mature trees and stay damp on the north side. Old houses add their own issues. Stucco from the 1920s and 1930s cracks at the corners and around windows and needs patching and an alkali-tolerant primer. Original wood siding and trim carry many coats, and on a pre-1978 house some of those coats may contain lead, which changes how the scraping and sanding gets done. Ice dams on older roofs push water behind fascia and soffits and the paint there fails first. We scope those spots up front rather than finding them mid-job.
Where we work in Wayzata
Wayzata is a small city, so we cover all of it: the estate roads on the bay, Holdridge and Old Holdridge, Highcroft and Locust Hills, the Highlands, Gleason Lake on the Plymouth side, and the townhomes and condos downtown near the 1906 Great Northern depot and Lake Street. Hwy 12 comes straight in from our shop, so the drive is about 20 minutes and a color check or a second look is easy. Wayzata Public Schools (ISD 284) also covers a big piece of Plymouth and parts of Medina, Corcoran, Orono and Minnetonka, so a Wayzata-schools address and a Wayzata address are not the same thing; we cover both.
Interior painting in Wayzata
Old Wayzata interiors are the ones we like best: plaster walls, deep window casings, built-in cabinets from the 1920s, painted paneling. They take more prep than drywall and reward it. The mid-century colonials are simpler but usually have decades of trim paint to deal with. Winter is when most of this gets done, and the drive is short. Before you call, read How interior painting goes, and what moves the cost.
Exterior painting in Wayzata
Wayzata exteriors are stucco, old wood and mid-century cedar and hardboard more than anything new, and all three need real prep: patched stucco, scraped and spot-primed wood, and care with pre-1978 paint that may contain lead. The bay side of a house fades, the tree side peels. We run Wayzata exteriors from roughly May into October and keep the stucco work for dry, mild weeks. See exterior house painting and siding painting.
Where we work in Wayzata
- Ferndale Road
- Bushaway Road
- Locust Hills
- Holdridge
- Highcroft
- Wayzata Highlands
- Gleason Lake
- Downtown Lake Street
Painting services in Wayzata
Questions from WayzataStraight answers.
Can you paint a 1920s stucco house in Wayzata?
Yes. Old stucco is one of the common exteriors on the bay side of Wayzata and it holds paint well when it is prepped properly: cracks patched, chalk washed off, an alkali-tolerant primer, then a breathable finish. If the house has been painted before with an elastomeric or oil product, we test a spot first.
Our Wayzata house has original wood trim with many coats of paint. What do you do with it?
We assess it first. On a pre-1978 house some of those coats may contain lead, which changes how sanding and scraping is done, and we talk about that before quoting. Then it depends on condition: sound paint gets cleaned, scuffed, primed and enameled; alligatored or failing paint gets scraped back further. We tell you which before we quote.
Do you paint downtown Wayzata condos and townhomes?
Yes. Interior painting in the Lake Street and Promenade buildings is work we take on: walls, ceilings, trim and cabinets, scheduled around building rules for elevators and hours. Exterior work on those buildings usually runs through the association, and we take on select commercial and association projects where the scope fits.
How is painting a Wayzata rebuild different from painting an old house?
A rebuild is mostly new drywall, new trim and factory-primed fiber cement, so the work is clean and fast and the finish quality is the whole point. An old house is prep: plaster, old trim, stucco, old paint. We do both, and the difference shows up in the estimate as hours of preparation rather than gallons of paint.