Oakdale Painters — Oakdale Square, Oakdale Avenue and surrounding streets

Oakdale Square's commercial building went up in 1925 as six stores. Neighbors complained it would create a blind corner, the town's building inspector tried to stop construction, and the builder, John Picone of Newton, won the dispute at the Supreme Judicial Court. A 1947 aerial in the Planning Board's master plan shows the original Oakdale School where Veterans' Park is now.

We found no historic district, MACRIS area form or published survey for Oakdale, so this page sticks to what records show. The assessor lists 85 Woodleigh Road, an Oakdale street that falls in neighboring Tract 4024, as a two-story Colonial built in 1920 with about 2,800 square feet of living area.

Census tracts do not follow neighborhood lines, and Oakdale is split. Tract 4022, which contains Oakdale Avenue and Ashcroft Street, is the closest proxy. Owner occupancy there is high: 92.4% of its 902 occupied homes are lived in by their owners, against 73.4% for the whole town. Of its 914 units, 34.4% date from 1940 to 1959 and 88.6% predate 1980, and none are in buildings of 20 or more units.

Postwar houses in the mix

About a third of Tract 4022's housing dates from the 1940s and 1950s, and nearly a quarter from 1939 or earlier. A postwar house may still have its original wood siding, or it may have been covered in aluminum or vinyl, which leaves trim, doors and windows as the painted parts. An estimate should start by identifying which you have.

Owner-occupied means lived-in rooms

With 92.4% of homes owner-occupied, the person hiring a painter is usually the person living in the rooms. If you will be home during interior work, ask for a room-by-room schedule that covers furniture moves and drying time; see interior painting in Dedham.

Single-family attached units

The tract counts 169 single-family attached units, 18.5% of its housing. Owners of a townhouse or half of a double need to coordinate exterior color and timing with whoever shares the wall.

Pre-1978 paint is the norm

Because 88.6% of units in the tract were built before 1980, old coatings may contain lead. Work that disturbs those layers is covered by federal lead-safe rules; our lead-safe painting page explains what that involves.