House Painters in Greenwood, Nebraska

Greenwood was laid out in 1869, when farmers here bought ground and handed it to the Burlington for a station on its new line to Lincoln. The village incorporated in 1883 and had 840 people by 1885. Two fires took most of the business district in the twenties, and the thirties took more of the businesses that were left. What survives of the town’s history isn’t downtown. It’s the houses.

Original streets, eighty-some coats

A good share of what stands on the original streets predates 1940 — wood lap siding, wood sash, front-porch railings, eighty-some years of stacked coats. Getting the old surface sound is the long half of that job; the painting is the short half. Paint laid down before 1978 can carry lead in the lower layers, which is worth raising before anybody puts a sander to it. The fifties-through-seventies ranches in between are plainer work: wood trim, fascia and soffits on their second or third color, interiors on their third.

New houses on old lots

Sitting two miles off I-80 has brought people back since the eighties. Original houses have come down and new ones gone up in the same spots, and the village has spread west. Those arrive with factory-finished engineered siding and prefinished trim, so there’s nothing soft to cut out — but a cured factory finish is slick, and a color change has to bond to it. A new house here is a primer question more than a repair one. Out past the village line the acreages take sun and wind off open ground, on gables tall enough to need the boom lift.

The village has given us one job so far, an exterior, and one house is one house — we won’t stretch it into a record. But it beats guessing about a town we’d only driven through. We’re in Ashland, eight miles northeast of you on Highway 6, a twelve-minute drive; the two towns have shared a high school since 1957, when Greenwood’s graduating class got down to one student. We’ve been at it since 1981, the second generation runs it now, and the people who show up are our employees rather than subcontractors. Labor and materials are covered for three years. Ask us to write it down — 402.521.5800 — and that part is free.