When to Book Exterior Work on LBI: A Month-by-Month Calendar

February and March — book, do not work

Nothing much can be done outdoors, and this is exactly when the good crews fill their spring calendar. Anyone calling for a pre-season wash in the second week of May is calling too late for the date they want. If you take one thing from this piece: the booking season and the working season are not the same season.

Late April and May — the best working window of the year

Temperatures are reliable enough for stain and sealer, the island is empty enough to park a truck, and there is no changeover calendar to work around. Everything that needs to dry — deck coating, paver sealing, cedar work — belongs here. So does the whole-property open-up: house, glass, deck, shower, fence.

June — the last of the easy scheduling

Still workable early in the month. By the third week the rentals have started and access begins to be the constraint rather than the weather.

July and August — access, not weather, is the problem

The work is perfectly possible; getting to the house is not. There is nowhere to stage a rig in Ship Bottom, no room on the West streets in Brant Beach, and a Saturday changeover calendar over the top of it. Washing can be done, generally early in the morning and mid-week. Anything involving a coating is better left alone — not because it will not cure, but because a freshly sealed deck and a house full of holidaymakers do not mix.

September and October — the second good window

After Labor Day the island empties and the weather is still on your side well into October. This is the close-down: gutters cleared before the leaf drop and the first nor'easters, salt flushed off the elevations that will sit through winter, and glass done so the house does not spend six months under a film. It is the visit most owners skip and the one that does the most for the fabric of the building.

November through January — repair, not cleaning

Too cold for coatings and largely pointless for washing, since anything cleaned will take a winter of salt before anybody sees it. The exception is gutters, which are worth clearing after the last of the leaves come down whatever the calendar says.

The two things timing actually changes

Price, because access in the shoulder season costs a crew far less time than access in July. And quality, because stain, sealer and coating have real temperature and dry-time requirements that the middle of the summer meets and the edges of the year meet better.