Local homes painted to perfection
I t takes a special type of person to invest the time, energy and money necessary to rehabilitate an old house or storefront. But it takes a homeowner or businessperson who is truly dedicated to their old structure to turn it into a “painted lady” with all of its details both intricate and mundane painted in such a way as to make them stand out and “wow” passers-by.
For the past 24 years those dedicated owners and the painting contractors they hired have been honored annually by the Chicago Paint and Coatings Association for their efforts to improve historic neighborhoods and preserve our communities' residential and commercial architectural history. The contest is open to properties within a 50-mile radius of Chicago.
This year's eight winners who reside in communities like Elgin, Batavia, Cary and Evanston, as well as Chicago and Walworth, Wis., were honored at a recent dinner held at Maggiano's in Schaumburg.
The entries are always judged in a variety of categories like “Best Use of Color for Multiple Surfaces,” “Best Non-Professionally Painted” structure and “Best Professionally Painted” structure. A Grand Prize winner is also chosen each year and all honorees receive a plaque to commemorate their achievement.
The Queen Anne-style home of Anne Bird, located at 268 Seneca St. in Elgin, is this year's Grand Prize winner. Built in 1892, it is officially known as the Minnie Covey Schoonhoven Rental House since it was built as a boardinghouse, according to Jennifer Phillips, Bird's daughter.
Bird purchased the house for only $50,000 when it was in foreclosure during the summer of 2009. So she was able to invest a lot of money in restoring, improving and brightening up the endangered house.
Interestingly, the home was saved from ruin once before. During the 1980s active Elgin preservationists purchased it, replaced the broken windows, refinished floors, restored the electricity and running water and turned it into a Painted Lady using shades of red and eggplant. But after they sold it in the 1990s, the home once again became a rental house and deteriorated.
Since Bird purchased the house last summer the family has put on a new roof and gutters, jacked up and re-supported the house, replaced moldy drywall, updated the kitchen, added a driveway, replaced the front steps and replaced all of the plumbing. And they hired Carlos Rivera of Homework Construction, Inc. of Elgin to paint the exterior in 11 different colors, including sandstone, crabapple wine, rosy pink and numerous greens.
“We just picked the colors that made my mom happy,” Phillips explained.
Louis Perlia of Graphic Construction and Painting Company in Evanston painted the Victorian home at 1333 Church St. in Evanston, which took the award for the best professionally painted structure. Owned by Dr. James McCauley for more than a decade, the Victorian home, built in 1885, was raggedy and peeling when Perlia was called in. It had long been primarily painted a bluish-green with worn-looking reddish highlights, according to Perlia.
He spent five weeks repainting the lovely old home using “better tones of green, highlighted by the Georgian brick color of the home's chimneys and cream.” Perlia said that since the home had several different surfaces like cedar shake, fish scales and regular wood siding, he used the various colors to bring out those details and “make the house the painted lady it should be.”
Don Cole of Batavia won his third Painted Ladies competition award, “Best Non-Professionally Painted,” for painting his carriage house/reworked garage to match the house and gazebo, which have won in previous years. Remarkably, Cole, a semiretired builder, has done all of the color selection and painting himself.
“I really enjoyed doing it,” Cole said. “”Doing something like this is one of those things you really appreciate when you are done.”
He painted all three structures in a total of six colors with tan as the primary color and shades of brown and rust as the accents.
The “Best Use of Detail” award went to Patricia Harkin and James Sosnoski of Elgin for their Victorian/Eastlake-style home at 1005 N. Spring Street. The home was entirely beige and the front porch was sagging when the pair, both professors of communications at the University of Illinois in Chicago, purchased it in 2002.
“I was a sucker for the turret,” Harkin admitted.
The current house is actually a combination of two houses. The original was built in 1892 for the Spurling family, and a Cape Cod-style home was added in the rear in 1948. Dr. Francis Towner, a physician at Sherman Hospital, built the smaller home as a medical office/rental apartment.
Holly and John Weidmeyer of Quality Painting and Carpentry of Elgin were hired to transform the house into a Painted Lady and the City of Elgin gave the couple a grant to help with the cost of the work.
Now the home sports nine colors including three shades of gray, three shades of green, white, gold, and burgundy.
“There are so many different ways to paint a house,” said Holly. “It doesn't have to be boring. So we picked luscious and deep colors that flowed well and made a smooth transition between the two houses.”
The award for the “Best Use of Color for Multiple Surfaces” went to an Evanston Arts and Crafts-style home, proving that a home doesn't need to be a Victorian to look great with multiple exterior colors.
Built in 1908, the home is now owned by Carol McCullough and is located at 1120 Elmwood Ave. in Evanston. McCullough gutted the kitchen, dug out a basement and put on a big addition since she moved in during 2002. Before the recent painting project by Thomas J. Dewey and Company of Evanston, the home featured brown shingle siding, beige stucco and beige pillars.
The new five-color palette was chosen to emphasize the earth tones of browns, reds and greens.
Dewey said it took him three weeks to stain the shingles and prime and paint the trim and stucco.
“It was really fun to do this type of paint job on a house that is not a Victorian,” Dewey said. “The extra colors really show off the details of the architecture.”
A commercial structure in Cary took the award for the “Best Use of Color Combinations to Enhance Details.” Jim and Janice Gleason own the property in the downtown area, which was originally a blacksmith shop, then an antique store and now serves as a small office building with an apartment on the second floor.
Built in 1861 on property originally owned by the town's founder, William Cary, the structure was first adorned as a Painted Lady 12 years ago and now has won the contest for its choice of colors.
Bob Swanson of Swanson Painting in Cary was the contractor who chose the colors and did the painting.
“It has a small facade with a nice cornice on top and we wanted to make sure the architectural details stand out,” he said. “The trick is to use the brightest color on the smallest architectural detail and then to use various shades of the same color which complement each other.”
The award for the “Best Use of Color for the Style of the Structure” went to Jed and Cindy Mundell of 9601 S. Damen Ave., Chicago and Chicago Stucco Company. And the “Best Use of Color for a Business” honors went to Barbara Peterson, 241 S. Main St., Walworth, Wis. Her contractor was also Swanson Painting of Cary.