Exterior Painting for Foxborough, MA homeowners.

Some painted exteriors in town go back well over two centuries. The Capt. Josiah Pratt House on East Street, a Georgian built around 1760, is wood frame with clapboard siding, and the 1897 Foxboro Grange Hall on Bird Street is clapboard over three stories. At the other end, Census estimates show 27.2% of housing units built from 1980 through 1999 and 18.1% since 2000. A paint job on either kind of house starts with the same question: is the existing coating still bonded to the wood?

Where paint is tight, the work is cleaning, spot-scraping, priming bare wood, caulking and two finish coats. Where it is cracking across the grain or peeling to bare wood, the failure has to be traced before anything else happens, because new paint over a moisture problem fails the same way.

Reading the siding before choosing a method

Peeling that shows up on one side of the house, or only below a bathroom or near a gutter, points to moisture from inside or above. Fixing a missing kitchen vent, a clogged gutter or failed flashing first is what keeps the new coat on.

• Wood clapboard: scrape loose paint, sand the edges smooth, prime any bare wood the same day it is exposed
• Cedar shingles: check whether they were painted or stained, since solid stain and paint behave differently on recoat
• Aluminum or vinyl siding: clean thoroughly and use a paint rated for vinyl, in a color no darker than the maker allows
• Trim, fascia and window casings: probe for soft wood and replace rot before priming

Lead-safe work on older siding

About 54.7% of the town's housing units were built before 1980, by Census count. Old exterior layers on those houses may include lead paint, and scraping or sanding them creates chips and dust that land in soil and garden beds. Under the federal Renovation, Repair and Painting Rule, work disturbing paint on a pre-1978 home needs a certified firm, ground plastic, wet scraping and careful cleanup. Open-flame burning and power sanding without HEPA shrouds are not allowed. Details are on our lead-safe painting page.

National Register houses

The Norfolk County National Register list shows individual Foxborough properties, such as the Ezra Carpenter House, a Cape from 1800, and the Otis Cary House on South Street, rather than a historic district. Listing on the National Register by itself does not normally restrict a private owner's paint choices; local rules are what matter. If you own one of these buildings, or any house you think may be under local review, ask the town before changing colors or replacing original trim.

For a house of that age, the bigger question is preservation of the wood itself. Original clapboards are usually worth repairing with epoxy and dutchman patches rather than replacing, and a primer made for weathered wood helps old boards hold paint.

Timing the job

Exterior paint needs dry siding and air and surface temperatures within the label's range through the drying period. Cold nights and morning dew shrink that window as fall goes on; late-season work is possible with low-temperature products, as explained in painting an exterior in November. Our guide to how long exterior paint lasts helps set expectations for the next repaint.

AJ Painting Services, based in Ashland, is licensed and insured. The free on-site visit ends with a written estimate that names the prep steps, the repairs, the products and the number of coats for each surface.