Olive Tower: Repainting A 96-Year-Old Seattle Landmark

The Client

Bell­wether Hous­ing is the Puget Sound region’s largest non­prof­it afford­able hous­ing provider, serv­ing 7,000 res­i­dents annu­al­ly across King Coun­ty. Their port­fo­lio spans decades of con­struc­tion from new­er build­ings to pre-war mason­ry tow­ers like Olive Tow­er, a 1928 land­mark in Seat­tle’s Den­ny Tri­an­gle neighborhood.

Lisa Hawkins, Bell­wether’s Senior Con­struc­tion Man­ag­er, over­sees a demand­ing port­fo­lio of main­te­nance and cap­i­tal improve­ment work. She has to stretch every dol­lar, work with reli­able con­trac­tors, and make sure projects on occu­pied build­ings don’t cre­ate prob­lems for res­i­dents or neighbors.

We’ve been one of those con­trac­tors for years.

The Build­ing

Olive Tow­er was built in 1928. It’s a stuc­co-clad mason­ry build­ing in down­town Seat­tle, beau­ti­ful, his­toric, and entire­ly unfor­giv­ing of shortcuts.

When Bell­wether decid­ed to repaint the exte­ri­or, the ques­tion was­n’t just what col­or to use. It was what prod­uct could actu­al­ly pro­tect a 96-year-old build­ing for decades to come.

The Prod­uct: Not What We Orig­i­nal­ly Bid

Lisa asked for a prod­uct that would per­form. We worked direct­ly with Sher­win-Williams to deter­mine the right solu­tion for aged stucco.

Lox­on XP is not a stan­dard exte­ri­or paint. It’s a high-build water­proof­ing mason­ry coat­ing designed specif­i­cal­ly for aged and high-poros­i­ty sur­faces like this one. Stan­dard exte­ri­or paint cov­ers 300 – 350 square feet per gal­lon. Lox­on XP cov­ers 80 – 110 square feet per gal­lon on rough stuc­co. You use three to four times as much prod­uct per square foot, because you need to. The coat­ing builds a thick, flex­i­ble film that bridges hair­line cracks, resists alka­li and efflo­res­cence, and stands up to wind-dri­ven rain. Applied to the right sub­strate, it’s engi­neered to last.

The prep was min­i­mal, just a thor­ough pres­sure wash. After 96 years, the build­ing had no sig­nif­i­cant peel­ing paint. One change order cov­ered crum­bling win­dow sur­rounds that need­ed to be pulled and patched. Oth­er­wise, the build­ing was in remark­ably sound condition.

The Wait

The project was bid in 2020. We did­n’t paint it until 2022.

This was­n’t a sched­ul­ing fail­ure. In ear­ly 2021, the Texas freeze knocked out Sher­win-Williams and Ben­jamin Moore paint pro­duc­tion facil­i­ties. What had already been man­u­fac­tured was destroyed. Com­bined with the simul­ta­ne­ous ship­ping cri­sis, it took both com­pa­nies near­ly two years to catch back up on spe­cial­ty prod­uct pro­duc­tion. We could­n’t get the paint.

On top of that, Olive Tow­er required side­walk per­mits for swing stage instal­la­tion over a pub­lic side­walk, need­ed just twice, for half a day each, to set up and break down. The City of Seat­tle’s pan­dem­ic-era per­mit­ting por­tal han­dled each request one ques­tion at a time, with two-week delays between respons­es. Our project coor­di­na­tor Caitlin owned that process entire­ly, fol­low­ing up con­sis­tent­ly, answer­ing each ques­tion the por­tal sent back, and keep­ing things mov­ing so Lisa nev­er had to chase it.

When we final­ly had paint and per­mits, the work went exact­ly as planned.

Why Bell­wether Trust­ed Us With It

A 96-year-old mason­ry build­ing in down­town Seat­tle. Occu­pied res­i­dents. A his­toric façade vis­i­ble from the street. The wrong con­trac­tor, wrong prod­uct, wrong access method, wrong approach to prep could cause dam­age that out­lasts any paint job.

Lisa had worked with All Cov­ered long enough to know how we oper­ate: we show up when we say we will, we com­mu­ni­cate before prob­lems become sur­pris­es, and we don’t cut cor­ners on prep to pro­tect a mar­gin. For a project of this com­plex­i­ty on a build­ing of this age, that track record mat­tered more than any­thing else on the page.

When the paint arrived and the per­mits cleared, the work went exact­ly as planned. No sur­pris­es on the build­ing, and none from us.