Old houses close to downtown
Greenville has seven historic districts, most of them in the older rings of the city around Main Street, Falls Park on the Reedy and the Swamp Rabbit Trail: Hampton-Pinckney, Pettigru, Colonel Elias Earle, East Park Avenue, Heritage, Overbrook and West End.
Hampton-Pinckney was the city’s first trolley neighborhood, and in 1977 it became Greenville’s first locally designated preservation district. Overbrook, between Pleasantburg Drive, East North Street, Stone Avenue and Laurens Road, filled in with bungalows from about 1913 to 1924. East Park Avenue was building up in the early 1900s.
Houses like these share a few traits that matter to a painter:
- Wood siding and trim with a long paint history. Decades of layers mean some of it is tight and some is ready to lift. We wash, scrape and sand what is loose, spot prime bare wood, then put on two coats. See our wood siding page.
- Deep porches, columns and railings. Porches take the most weather on these houses, and columns and railings are careful brush work.
- Plaster and tall ceilings inside. Cracked plaster has to be repaired and primed before paint will hide it. Our drywall repair page covers how we patch.
If you live in one of the city’s districts and plan an exterior color change, check with the city’s planning office first. We can give you the exact color names and sheens to bring with you.
Mill villages on the west side
Greenville was a textile city, and the villages around its mills are still neighborhoods: Monaghan, Poe Mill, Judson, Brandon and Woodside, whose mill village is a historic district of its own. Monaghan Mill itself is now apartments, and West Greenville has filled up with studios and small shops. Unity Park, which opened in 2022, sits on the west side along the Reedy River.
Mill houses are small and simple, which makes them good candidates for a full repaint inside and out. Typical needs: peeling paint on wood lap siding (or vinyl added over it later), a porch to scrape and repaint, and tight interior rooms where trim, doors and walls all get done at once. We paint interior doors on both sides and the jamb. If you are fixing one up to sell, that is what our getting ready to sell service is for.
Augusta Road, North Main and the mid-century streets
The neighborhoods off Augusta Road filled in mostly from the 1940s into the early 1960s: bungalows, ranches and traditional two-story houses, often brick with painted wood trim, on mature lots. Meyers Park in that part of town has mid-century homes on wooded lots. Across town, North Main and Alta Vista have early and mid 20th century houses under big tree canopies, and Gower Estates has mid-century homes on large lots with creeks running through.
Mid-century houses tend to need careful interior painting around built-ins, plaster arches, hardwood floors and original trim. Outside, shady lots mean mildew on the north side and on trim near the ground, so the wash before painting matters as much as the paint. If you are thinking about painting or limewashing brick, read our guide on painting brick or vinyl siding and see our brick and limewash page. Limewash is quoted on site.
East side subdivisions toward Woodruff Road
On the east side, Botany Woods has houses from around 1970, Parkins Mill is an established neighborhood, and Verdae, with Hollingsworth Park at its center, is a newer master-planned community off Woodruff Road. That spread covers fifty years of building, so the work does too: oak cabinets in the older houses, builder flat paint and two-story rooms in the newer ones.
For kitchens, see cabinet painting. We take the doors and drawer fronts off, label them, and spray them with Sherwin-Williams Gallery Series Waterborne Topcoat. If your newer house has fiber cement siding, we pressure wash it and put on two coats. See fiber cement siding.
Inside, room by room
Whatever the age of the house, Greenville interiors come down to the same building blocks: walls, ceilings, trim and doors, plus crown molding, which is common in older and higher-end houses. The price depends on the size of each room, the prep it needs and the paint level you pick, and how we price walks through it. Bathrooms take longer because of the tight cutting around fixtures. A bold color change, like going from a pale wall to a deep green, needs an extra coat. If you are stuck between sheens, our guide to paint sheen room by room will help.
Getting to you
Greenville is across the county line from our base in Duncan, and we work all over the city. We also cover the towns around it, including Taylors, Mauldin, Travelers Rest and the Greenville County side of Piedmont. Every estimate is free and comes with a color consult. To see what goes into a price, read how we price.