Loveladies exterior cleaning & restoration

Loveladies is where the island's cedar problem is at its largest and its most expensive to get wrong. The 1962 rebuild produced a generation of big cedar-clad contemporaries, and sixty years on, that cedar is the single most common reason anyone here calls an exterior cleaner. Cedar in this setting does not weather to the even silver people expect, because the tree cover that makes Loveladies attractive also keeps the walls damp — so what actually happens is blotchy blackening on the shaded elevations and bleached grey on the exposed ones, on the same house. Getting it right means a wash gentle enough not to raise the grain, a brightener to reset the colour, and an honest conversation about whether to seal it at all, because a sealed cedar wall this size is a commitment to doing it again in three to five years. The decks compound it: multi-level cedar and ipe decking under trees stays green on the north runs, and the glass these houses were designed around shows every bit of salt and pollen the shade holds onto.

Working here

The largest lots on the island, with room to work — but the houses sit well back, decks wrap several elevations, and the bay side of a bayfront lot is often only reachable through the property.

Around Loveladies

The work comes from the bayfront lagoons and deep-water lots on the west side; the ocean-block lanes running east off Long Beach Boulevard; the wooded interior lots between the Boulevard and the bay; the streets around the Long Beach Island Foundation of the Arts and Sciences.

On cost in Loveladies

Loveladies carries the highest typical job values on the island and the reason is surface area, not location. Big cedar elevations, multi-level decks and large glazed walls are simply a lot of square footage, and cedar restoration in particular is priced by the wall rather than by the visit. Room to stage equipment works in your favour here and takes some of that back.

Loveladies has the island's heaviest concentration of cedar-clad contemporary houses, most of them dating from the rebuild after the 1962 storm, which makes cedar washing, brightening and sealing the dominant exterior job here rather than an occasional one.

The tree cover that gives the section its character is also what holds moisture against the siding, so a Loveladies house frequently blackens on its shaded elevations while bleaching grey on the exposed ones — two different problems on one wall of cedar.

Permits run through the Long Beach Township Construction Office. Washing generally falls outside home improvement; the staining and sealing work that so much cedar restoration ends in does not, and New Jersey requires the contractor's registration to be current before a permit is issued.