Painting a historic home in Leavenworth

Leavenworth is the oldest city in Kansas, and it has eight registered historic districts inside the city limits. If your house is in one of them, or is individually listed, there is a step in front of some exterior work that does not exist elsewhere in the county.

The eight districts

• Downtown Historic District
• Arch Street Historic District
• North Esplanade Historic District
• South Esplanade Historic District
• North Broadway Historic District
• Union Park Historic District
• Third Avenue Historic District
• Historical Industrial District

What the city actually says

From the city's own Historic Preservation page:

Any proposed changes to a property listed on the National or State Historic Register, within a registered Historic District, or a Local Landmark requires a state law review and/or issuance of a Certificate of Appropriateness, as required by the Kansas State Preservation Statute (K.S.A. 75-2724).

Two things worth being precise about, because contractors get this wrong in both directions.

First, this is a state statute, not just a city ordinance. Kansas reviews changes to listed properties under K.S.A. 75-2724, and the review can extend to properties in the environs of a listed landmark — meaning your house can be affected by a neighbor's listing.

Second, we are not going to tell you that repainting definitely triggers it. Review scope depends on the property, its listing status and the specific work, and paint color is commonly treated differently from changes to materials or windows. The city's own instruction is to contact staff to discuss the proposed work and determine the needed level of review. Planning & Community Development is at (913) 680-2626.

What we will say: find out before the crew shows up, not after a neighbor calls. It is a phone call.

Lead, which is not optional

Almost everything in these districts predates 1978, and a great deal of it predates 1920. Under the EPA's Renovation, Repair and Painting rule, disturbing painted surfaces on a pre-1978 home requires an EPA-certified firm, certified renovators, contained work practices and specific cleanup.

Exterior prep on a hundred-year-old house is the textbook case. If you are getting bids and one is dramatically lower, this is one of the two places the money usually came from — the other being how much old coating actually comes off.

What good work on an old house looks like

• Hand scraping over power sanding wherever the substrate is soft. Aggressive machine work eats the detail that makes these houses worth painting.
• Glazing checked before paint. Original wood sash with failed glazing will keep failing regardless of what goes over it.
• Repair rather than replace trim where it is sound enough. Replacement profiles rarely match, and on a listed property the substitution can matter.
• Containment on the ground. Chips do not belong in the soil around a house where people garden.

Color

Paint color on a historic house is one of the few decisions that is fully reversible, which is why it is usually treated more leniently than material changes. That said, if you are in a district and planning a dramatic departure, asking first costs nothing and settles it.