Exterior Painting serving Norwood and Metro West MA.

South Dedham was incorporated as Norwood in 1872, and the Norwood Historical Society credits the Norwood and Plimpton presses, the Winslow & Smith tanneries, the Morrill ink works and the Lenox Street rail yard with drawing immigrant workers who needed places to live. Today, single-family detached houses make up 46.8% of local housing units, while 19.3% sit in buildings of two to four units, a category that includes two-families and triple-deckers.

From the outside, those buildings ask different things of a paint job. A one-story house can be reached from ladders; a three-story facade with stacked porches needs staging or a lift, and every floor of it may belong to a different household.

Three-story multi-family buildings

According to the Norwood Historical Society, the Flats, now South Norwood, went from sparse farmland to more than 200 multi-family homes and over 60 shops by 1917, and its rows of triple-deckers went up quickly between 1900 and 1920. Those buildings are now more than a century old, and their exteriors can carry that many years of paint history. The South Norwood neighborhood page has more background.

Painting one involves more than height. Tenants on each floor need notice about windows, porch furniture, parked cars and when the crew will be outside their apartment. Porch ceilings, balusters and floor edges on every level add hours of brush work that a simple wall estimate misses. If the building is a condominium, the association, not one owner, usually controls the exterior; see our condo painting page.

Scraping old paint without spreading lead

Census figures show 71.5% of the town's housing units were built before 1980. The decade-based tables cannot pin down 1978 exactly, but federal lead rules cover every home built before that year, and paid work that disturbs paint on one must be done by certified renovators. Massachusetts administers its own version of the EPA program.

Outside, the concern is chips and dust landing in soil where children play and vegetables grow. Lead-safe exterior prep means ground sheeting that extends well past the wall, wet scraping, no open-flame burning, and power tools only with HEPA-filtered shrouds. Our lead-safe painting page goes through the requirements.

Postwar houses and their siding

The 1950s produced 2,829 of the town's housing units, more than any other single decade in the Census table, and the 1960s added 1,639 more. Some houses of that age have had their original clapboards or shingles covered with aluminum or vinyl, while others still show the original wood. Each surface takes a different approach:

• Wood clapboards and shingles: scrape loose paint, sand edges smooth, replace rotted boards, prime bare wood, then two finish coats
• Aluminum siding: wash off chalk, prime where the factory finish has worn through, then topcoat with exterior acrylic
• Vinyl siding: clean it and use a color formulated for vinyl, since dark shades can absorb enough heat to warp panels
• Trim, fascia and window sills: probe for soft wood first, since these flat and horizontal pieces hold water longest

Historic buildings and color choices

Wikipedia's list of National Register properties in Norfolk County includes two individual entries here: the Fred Holland Day House on Day Street, built in 1859 in the Second Empire style and remodeled in the Tudor Revival style in 1890–92, and the granite Memorial Municipal Building at 566 Washington Street. The list shows no National Register historic district in town. If you are unsure whether any local rule applies to your property, ask the town before settling on a color.

For a two-family or a building shared with neighbors, agreeing on the palette before the estimate keeps the job from stalling halfway.

Timing work in the fall

October still allows exterior painting on the right days. Each product label lists a minimum air and surface temperature, and the coating has to dry before evening dew settles on it. Shorter days shrink the working window, so late-season work is best planned one side at a time, following the sun. Our posts on the best time of year to paint and painting a house in November go into detail.