Painting, roofing and remodeling for Milwaukee's older homes

By 1911, the Encyclopedia of Milwaukee records, the duplex was the city's most common house type. The usual form is the up-and-down two-flat, one unit stacked on another with a front porch and an enclosed rear stair, built mostly between 1890 and 1930. The Polish flat is its South Side relative: a workers' cottage raised on posts so that a brick-walled, semi-basement unit could be built underneath. Bungalows came next, roughly 1900 to 1930, filling the “bungalow belt” at the city's edge, including brick Chicago bungalows with a sunroom bay. Then there is Cream City brick, the soft golden-yellow brick made from local clay until the 1920s, which gave the city its nickname.

Each type has its weak points. A two-flat means two porches, two stories of wood trim and a rear stair that takes the weather. A Polish flat's lower unit sits partly below grade, so grading and downspouts decide how dry it stays; University of Minnesota Extension advises ground that falls at least 1 in. per foot for 6 ft and downspouts that discharge at least 4 ft from the wall. Nearly all of these houses have lath-and-plaster walls. And cream brick is soft: the National Park Service warns that repointing mortar must be softer than the brick, so where roof flashing is let into a mortar joint, that joint should be re-pointed with a soft mortar.

With 84.2% of units built before 1980 and 34% before 1940, lead paint is the normal case, not the exception. Wisconsin's lead-safe rule (DHS 163) governs paid renovation on pre-1978 homes, and in a city where only 41.8% of homes are owner-occupied it reaches further than people expect. DHS exempts owners doing their own work only when no part of the home is rented, so an owner who lives downstairs and rents the upper does not qualify. Anyone hired must hold DHS lead-company certification and put a renovator with DHS certification in charge.