Exterior House Painting Built for Florida's Sun, Salt and Humidity

Price is driven by four things: the square footage of painted surface, the substrate, how much prep and repair the house needs, and how many colours and stories are involved. A single-storey stucco home in good condition is straightforward. A two-storey wood-sided house on the ocean with failing caulk, chalked paint and soft trim is a different job, because most of the labour goes into preparation rather than paint. That is why we do not quote by phone from a square footage guess. We walk the house, show you what we find, and price it in writing so you can see what you are paying for and what you could defer.

Inland Jacksonville homes typically get eight to twelve years from a well-prepared exterior. Within a few blocks of the ocean in Atlantic Beach, Neptune Beach, Jacksonville Beach, Ponte Vedra Beach or Fernandina Beach, five to eight years is more realistic, and south- and west-facing walls fail first because they take the most UV. The single biggest factor is not the paint — it is whether the surface was clean, dry and properly primed when the paint went on. Paint applied over live mildew or chalk will fail in two or three years no matter what it cost.

Yes, and it is included in every exterior project rather than sold as an add-on. Paint bonds to the surface, not to what is sitting on it, and in this climate that means mildew spores, chalked paint residue, salt film and pollen all have to come off first. We soft wash anything fragile or porous — stucco, siding, soffits, painted trim — at low pressure with cleaning solution doing the work, and use real pressure only on hard, unpainted surfaces. We also let surfaces dry properly before coating, which in our humidity is a genuine scheduling constraint, not a formality.

We repair it. Hospitality Improvements is a licensed general contractor as well as a painting company, so carpentry and stucco repair are done by our own crew on the same project. Washing and scraping almost always uncovers things that mildew and old paint were hiding: soft fascia, split siding, failed caulk joints, hairline stucco cracks that let water in. A painting-only outfit has to either paint over it or hand you a referral. We show you what we found, price the repair separately so it is transparent, and you decide what gets done.

Yes, and in Ponte Vedra, Nocatee, Sawgrass, Marsh Landing, The Plantation and Plantation Oaks it is usually a requirement rather than a preference. We are used to working from an approved palette, matching an existing body or trim colour that is no longer in production, and preparing the sample boards or submittals some associations ask for before work starts. If you are not sure what your association requires, we can usually tell you from experience with your community.

Most single-family exteriors run three to seven working days, and prep is the majority of it — typically two to four days of washing, drying, scraping, sanding, caulking and repair before any finish coat goes on. Weather moves the schedule; afternoon storms and high humidity genuinely affect adhesion and dry time, and we would rather lose a day than trap moisture under new paint. You will know the plan before we start and we will tell you when it changes.