Edgemere Painters — Edgemere, Shrewsbury

The name crosses a municipal line: a Wikipedia list of Worcester neighborhoods notes that Edgemere lies mostly in Shrewsbury. The town's zoning bylaw recognizes it with an Edgemere Village Overlay District, meant to allow "neighborhood business and residential uses at a scale appropriate for a small village area." For decades the best-known landmark was the Edgemere Drive-In at 204 Hartford Turnpike, which opened in 1955 and showed its last films in 2004. That land is now Edgemere Crossing, anchored by a Market Basket that opened in January 2023 and planned with 250 apartments.

We found no MACRIS survey or historic district for Edgemere, so the picture of its homes comes from the Census Bureau. The block group containing Edgemere Boulevard and the Crossing holds 387 housing units with a median build year of 1975. That median hides a wide spread: 23.8% of units date from 1939 or earlier, 24.3% went up between 2000 and 2009, and the rest are scattered across the decades between. Two-thirds (67.2%) are single-family detached, 27.1% are single-family attached, and 89.0% of occupied homes are lived in by their owners. Those estimates show no buildings of five or more units, so the new Crossing apartments are either not yet counted or fall in a neighboring block group.

Prewar and new houses side by side

With nearly a quarter of units built before 1940 and another quarter after 2000, the same block group mixes houses that may carry decades of oil and latex layers with ones still on their first finish. An old oil coat and a newer factory primer take different primers and prep, so the first step is identifying what is actually on the walls.

Lead questions on older homes

Some 55% of units in this block group were built before 1980, and federal rules treat paint in pre-1978 housing as possibly containing lead. Before scraping or sanding one of the older houses, a test and proper containment are worth planning; our lead-safe painting page lays out the steps.

Attached homes and association rules

More than one in four homes here is attached. If an attached building belongs to a condominium association, read its rules on exterior colors and schedules before choosing anything, since the association may require units to match. Our condo and townhouse painting page covers working within those rules.

Homes near a retail strip

Hartford Turnpike now carries a supermarket and the rest of the Edgemere Crossing development. Siding on houses close to a busy road can pick up a film of grime, and washing it off before any coating goes on lets the new paint bond to clean material.