House Painters in Millard, Nebraska

Millard hasn’t been a town of its own since 1971, when Omaha annexed it after a court fight the Supreme Court wouldn’t hear. The schools stayed independent and the name stuck to the neighborhoods. What that history left is a housing stock with a hard start date: Western Electric opened its plant at 132nd and L in 1958, thousands followed the jobs out, and nearly every house in Millard went up after that.

Millard built itself from east to west

The old boundaries run 108th Street west to 180th, and the building went in roughly that order. Closer to 108th, older house.

More Millard homes went up in the 1970s than in any other decade — Harvey Oaks and Stony Brook among them. Where the siding on those is cedar or rough-sawn plywood, it doesn’t wear evenly. The south and west walls chalk and check first, after fifty summers of afternoon sun, while the shaded north side keeps its film and grows mildew instead.

Farther west you’re into the eighties and early nineties. If the lap siding there is pressed wood board, common on that vintage, once the paint seal opens it takes on water at the butt joints and bottom edges and swells. Caught early that’s a paint job; left alone it’s a siding job. Most of those houses are two stories, so the boom lift comes along.

Fifty years of trees, and the hail

West Papillion Creek runs through Millard, and a subdivision planted in 1975 has fifty-year-old trees over it now. Decks and cedar fences in that shade grey and mildew faster than the same boards on an open lot. This is hail country, and small stones chip paint and break seals without leaving much you’d notice from the driveway.

Interiors out here are mostly second- and third-owner work: two-story entry walls, oak trim, kitchens where the boxes are sound and the finish is dated.

We haven’t painted in Millard yet. Our nearest work is in Omaha — a black-cabinet kitchen, a stucco bungalow exterior and trim, a cedar fence stained. Behind it is a family that started painting in 1981, second generation now, carrying general liability insurance and standing behind labor and materials for three years. The number is 402.521.5800; the quote comes written and free.