Downtown and the older streets
Fountain Inn takes its name from an early 1800s inn with a spring, on the old road between Greenville and Laurens. The town grew after the railroad depot was built in 1886, and in the 1890s it gained a cotton mill, with a mill village across the tracks. Most of the city is in Greenville County, with its southern edge reaching into Laurens County.
Main Street (SC 14) runs through the middle of town, and I-385 runs along its southern edge. Downtown has been a South Carolina Main Street community since 2021. The Younts Center for Performing Arts is in the old high school building from 1939, and the Fountain Inn Museum is in the historic train depot just behind Main Street. The Swamp Rabbit Trail now has a Fountain Inn section starting at the trailhead on Hellams Street, with more being built toward Simpsonville.
If you live in one of the older houses near downtown, expect older-house prep: scraping and sanding loose paint, spot priming bare wood, and attention to porches and trim. See exterior painting.
The new neighborhoods
Around the old town, new neighborhoods keep going up. Communities like Durbin Meadows, Brighton Meadows, Reedy Creek Estates, Barton Hollow and Cedar Gap have gone up in the last few years, and Fountain Grove has custom homesites near downtown and the trail. Several of these neighborhoods have an HOA with a pool or other amenities, and with that, rules about exterior colors.
First-year paint on a new house
New houses tend to raise the same questions, so here are straight answers:
- Builder flat paint. It is cheap to touch up and easy to mark. Moving halls, stairways and kids’ rooms to a scrubbable finish is the most common first job. See interior painting.
- Nail pops and corner cracks. These are normal as new framing dries. We set the fasteners, patch with joint compound, sand and prime before painting. See drywall repair.
- One color everywhere. A free color consult helps you plan something better, room by room, including an accent wall if you want one.
- Garage door and front door. These are quick ways to change the look of a new house, as long as your HOA approves the color.
Fiber cement and the first repaint
Some of the new construction here uses fiber cement (Hardie) siding. It holds paint well, but the original finish still fades and chalks in the sun, and the caulked joints are usually the first place to show wear. When it is time, we pressure wash, re-caulk where joints have opened, and put on two coats. Our fiber cement siding page explains it, and how we price covers what goes into the price.
Up the Golden Strip
Fountain Inn is the south end of the Golden Strip. We also work up the road in Simpsonville and Mauldin, and in Five Forks.