The phone call we get from a Franklin historic district homeowner starts with the same sentence: I just got a letter from the HZC. The letter says the paint color the homeowner planned does not appear in the approved Certificate of Appropriateness. The project is on hold. They want to know what to do next.
Painting a historic home in downtown Franklin runs on a different process than painting a house three miles east in Cool Springs. The differences are not just aesthetic; they touch the application timeline, the paint chemistry, the surface prep, the color justification, and the contract itself. Eleven years of running residential exterior projects across Middle Tennessee have taught us where historic district owners get caught off guard in the Certificate of Appropriateness process. What follows is what the process actually requires, why the timeline runs 60 to 90 days, what paint we spec on a 1920s clapboard versus a 1990s siding, and what the contract looks like when it is built around the HZC review window.
Why Historic Painting Runs on a Different Process
Most residential exterior projects in Williamson County run on a timeline the homeowner controls: pick a color, sign a contract, schedule the work, paint the house. The Historic Preservation Overlay district in downtown Franklin removes the first step from the homeowner’s hands. Color, finish, and any change to the building facade fall under the review authority of the Historic Zoning Commission.
Heritage protection is the reason. Franklin’s downtown historic district includes structures from the early 19th century through the mid-20th century, and the city’s Historic District Design Guidelines exist to preserve the architectural character of those structures. The Guidelines reference the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for the Treatment of Historic Properties, a federal framework organized around four approaches: preservation, restoration, rehabilitation, and reconstruction. Paint color and material selection sit inside that framework.
For the homeowner, the practical implication is that painting becomes a two-track project: the paint work itself, and the application track that runs in parallel with it. We schedule historic projects accordingly, and the contract reflects both tracks at signing.
The Certificate of Appropriateness: What HZC Actually Requires
Before any paint goes on a facade in the Historic Preservation Overlay district, the homeowner submits a Certificate of Appropriateness application to the Franklin Historic Zoning Commission. The application is a public document that includes the proposed color, the manufacturer and product line, the application area (siding, trim, shutters, doors), photographs of the existing facade, and justification for the proposed change.
The HZC meets monthly, and applications must be submitted at least five working days before the scheduled meeting to make the agenda. Approval clears the project to begin. Denial or a return with conditions sends the homeowner back to address the conditions and resubmit for the next monthly meeting.
A few things that catch homeowners off guard:
Our role in this process is the paint side. The homeowner submits the COA application; we provide the manufacturer and product line spec, the color codes, photographs, and any supporting material the homeowner asks us to prepare.
The 60 to 90 Day Timeline We Plan Around
We plan historic exterior projects on a 60 to 90 day timeline because the HZC meets monthly and the application requires 5 working days notice before the meeting. The realistic sequence:
| Phase | Tasks |
|---|---|
| Week 1–2 | Initial walkthrough, paint specification, color sample preparation, photographs |
| Week 3 | Homeowner submits COA application to HZC |
| Week 4–7 | HZC review window (depending on monthly meeting date) |
| Week 8–9 | Approval received, project scheduling, weather check |
| Week 10–12 | Paint work executed |
The timeline stretches if the first submission is denied or returned with conditions. In 2,100 residential projects across Middle Tennessee, the historic ones that hit a full 90 days got there because a first application returned with a request for color justification and the homeowner had to resubmit the following month. The slowest part of the project is not the painting; it is the calendar.
For homeowners on a closing deadline, an insurance claim deadline, or a seasonal weather window, we recommend starting the COA conversation 90 days before the desired paint date. Working backward from a target date is how we keep the project from being squeezed.
Want to walk through what the COA timeline would look like for your historic home? Call 615-987-8011 and we will lay out the application steps and the paint plan together.
Paint Chemistry That Works on a 1900s Facade
The paint chemistry that works on a 1920s clapboard facade is not the paint chemistry that works on a 1990s engineered wood siding. The difference matters because applying a modern high-performance product over an old, chalking, or oxidized surface without the right primer leads to adhesion failure inside two to three years.
What we evaluate on a historic facade before specifying paint:
We spec premium acrylic for the topcoat on most historic exteriors, paired with a high-bond primer matched to the substrate condition. The specific product depends on the inspection. A bonding primer over chalking siding looks different from a stain-blocking primer over a wood facade with previous water damage. The same diagnostic mindset applies to an interior repaint plan on a historic property, where original plaster, lath, and accumulated paint layers carry their own substrate considerations.
The chemistry decisions are what keep the paint film bonded for the 8 to 10 year service life premium exterior product is supposed to deliver.
Lead-Safe Surface Prep for Pre-1978 Homes
Pre-1978 historic homes need lead-safe surface prep because that is when residential lead paint was banned in the United States. The EPA Renovation, Repair, and Painting (RRP) Rule requires contractors who disturb more than 20 square feet of exterior paint or 6 square feet of interior paint in pre-1978 homes to be EPA Lead-Safe Certified Firms using EPA-certified renovators.
What lead-safe prep actually looks like on a historic exterior:
The reason this matters is health, especially for households with children under six. Lead exposure during renovation has documented links to elevated blood lead levels, and the RRP Rule exists because the data showed renovation activity was a primary exposure pathway.
When we walk a historic property at the estimate, the year of construction is one of the first questions we ask. If the home is pre-1978, the lead-safe protocol gets built into the project scope before any color conversation begins. Our ten to fifteen painters across five teams run the same prep protocol on every pre-1978 project, so the homeowner gets the same lead-safe execution whether the crew on their property is team one or team five.
Color Justification: What the Secretary of Interior Standards Actually Want
Franklin’s design guidelines reference the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards rather than a fixed approved palette, which means color justification matters more than color selection. The HZC is not handing the homeowner a list of three pre-approved beiges; the commission is evaluating whether the proposed color is compatible with the architectural character of the building and the surrounding district.
The four Secretary of Interior approaches frame the conversation:
For most exterior repaint projects in downtown Franklin, the relevant approach is rehabilitation. The homeowner is keeping the building in active use and proposing a paint color compatible with the architectural style and the surrounding streetscape.
Strong color justification includes the architectural period of the home, the documented color palette common to that period (early 19th century used different pigment chemistry than mid-20th century), the surrounding building colors that establish district character, and the manufacturer color code with the specific product line. Weak justification is “we like this color.” Reviewers are not hostile, but they need the homeowner to do the framing work. We help homeowners assemble that material as part of the pre-application work, so the COA submission shows up complete on the first pass.
The Historic Project Contract We Write
The historic project contract we hand the homeowner reads with the COA timeline built in, so the application schedule and the work schedule do not collide. The contract language reads:
Project schedule: Initial walkthrough and paint specification, Week 1-2. COA application support, Week 2-3. HZC review window, Week 3-7. Paint work execution, Week 8-12. Schedule contingent on HZC approval timing. Pre-1978 properties subject to additional lead-safe protocols per EPA RRP Rule, costs and scope included in initial estimate.
The reason this works is that the homeowner has the entire timeline visible at signing. There is no surprise 6-week pause for HZC review, because the pause is in the contract. The paint work does not start before the approval comes through, because that is in the contract too.
For historic homes across the siding repaint plan scope, the contract anticipates inspection findings during prep that can adjust the scope. A chalking facade discovered during the walk that requires a bonding primer adjustment goes into the scope upfront, not as a surprise change order during execution. Across the AllBright TN service area, the same contract format applies to any property inside a designated historic district.
The historic project contract is more detailed than a standard exterior contract because the work has more moving parts. The homeowner sees the full picture before the signature.
Bottom Line
Painting a historic home in downtown Franklin is the same paint work at the wall, and a completely different project everywhere else. The COA process, the HZC review window, the paint chemistry decisions, the lead-safe protocols, and the color justification frame the project from start to finish.
We are AllBright Pro Painting in Smyrna, operating under TN license #1001565828. Reach our Nashville-area painting crews to learn how we built AllBright over the past eleven years.
Call 615-987-8011 to schedule a quote visit. Bring us your historic project and we will write the COA timeline into the contract before any work begins.