Painting in Orangevale, CA

Orangevale began life as the Orange Vale Colony, a piece of the 1844 Rancho San Juan land grant subdivided into agricultural parcels and planted with orange groves and olive orchards. Some of those original olive trees are still standing along Chestnut, Orangevale, Main and Walnut Avenues. That history is the reason the place still looks the way it does: 35,569 people spread across 11.451 square miles at about 3,106 to the square mile, on parcels laid out for smallholdings rather than for subdivisions.

Generous lots mean a different kind of painting job. There is usually more than a house on them — a detached garage, a shop or shed, a barn in places, and long runs of fencing between properties. Those structures are where most of the exterior wood on an Orangevale property actually is, and they weather harder than the house does because nobody maintains a shed the way they maintain a front elevation.

It is worth scoping them deliberately rather than assuming either way. A hundred feet of fence and a detached garage can be most of the work on a property, or they can be out of scope entirely and the house alone is the job. What we do not do is quote a house, arrive, and discover a different conversation waiting in the back garden.

The other thing about this ground is the oaks. Orangevale sits on rolling hills at the base of the Sierra Nevada foothills at about 240 feet, and the mature oak canopy left over from the colony days throws a lot of shade. A shaded north elevation holds its color far longer than the sunny side and stays damp longer after winter rain, which is where mildew and algae start. Washing that off before coating is not optional, because paint applied over growth is bonded to the growth and not to the wall.