Power Washing in Romeo, Michigan

A Village of Painted Wood, and the Care It Asks For

Romeo was settled in the 1820s as Hoxie's Settlement, platted in 1830, incorporated in 1839 and pushed along by the railroad's arrival in 1869, and the houses from that century are still standing. The Romeo Historic District, listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1970, takes in most of the village and about 100 preserved 19th-century structures. They are not scattered survivors: entire blocks of Gothic Revival cottages and larger Victorian-era frame houses stand under the same mature street trees, wrapped in painted wood siding and cut trim, with deep front porches that have carried many coats of paint.

That paint is why exterior cleaning here starts with restraint. Painted wood, layered trim and old window glazing cannot take pressure, so every historic-district wash is a soft wash: solution applied at low pressure, allowed to work, then rinsed at no more than hose flow. Main St, the downtown spine on the old Van Dyke alignment, adds a second material in its Civil War-era brick blocks, some still holding their original tin ceilings, and a share of the older houses are brick as well. Between the historic core and the village limits, and out along 32 Mile Rd, the 20th-century houses bring vinyl and aluminum.

The conditions follow the trees. The canopy over the blocks around Main St and St. Clair St, which crosses Main St at the original 1830 plat, keeps north walls and porch ceilings damp through the morning, and that is where algae and mildew take hold on painted siding and gingerbread trim. The same trees fill gutters twice a season. Along Van Dyke Ave (M-53) on the east side of the village, winter salt leaves a gray film on siding and glass, and on the acreage past the village line, gravel-flanked drives and private wells add road dust and iron staining to the list.

Six services get their own Romeo page below, each written for these houses and their problems. Romeo sits roughly a half hour north of our shop on Hall Road in Clinton Township, on a route that runs through Shelby Township and Washington Township toward Armada and Ray Township, so there is no travel fee and no waiting for a far-north day. Pricing is published, the estimate is itemized, and it comes back within 24 hours.

Three Kinds of Walls, Three Ways to Wash Them

The 19th-century frame houses inside the Romeo Historic District set our method. Painted wood siding, scroll-cut trim, porch columns and beadboard porch ceilings hold paint that is somewhere between fresh and failing, and a wash has to clean the sound paint without lifting the tired paint. We read the paint before mixing anything, keep the solution mild on wood, work the trim and porch detail by hand, and say so when a wall is past washing and ready for a painter. A clean before repainting is one of the more common calls we get on these blocks.

Brick is the second wall. The Main St storefronts and the older brick houses carry mortar that has been outdoors for well over a century, and soft brick loses its face to pressure, so those get a mild mix and a rinse held at hose strength, with attention at the joints and sills. The 20th-century houses toward the village limits are the easiest of the three: vinyl takes standard soft-wash chemistry, and aluminum gets an oxidation pre-treatment so the chalk lifts evenly instead of streaking.

Outside the village line the work changes again. The parcels in Bruce Township and Washington Township sit on the rolling ground the Macomb Orchard Trail crosses between Shelby Township and Richmond, with long drives and gravel-flanked approaches that send road dust onto siding and concrete. Well water leaves rust arcs below spigots and irrigation heads that need an iron-specific treatment rather than more pressure. Many of these homes keep wood decks under mature trees, and the route between Romeo and Armada passes most of them.