Exterior Painting right here in Quincy, Massachusetts.

The city's 2019 hazard mitigation plan summary describes more than 27 miles of coastline and three dense residential peninsulas, and it names nor'easters as the biggest coastal threat, with damage worst when a storm lines up with spring tides. For a painted exterior, that means rain driven sideways into lap joints, window heads and the bottom edges of shingles, and siding that may stay damp for days after a storm.

Paint does not fail there because the color was wrong. It fails where water gets behind it: open seams, missing caulk at corner boards, bare end grain on clapboards and gutters that overflow onto trim. A durable repaint on an exposed lot spends most of its hours on those details before any topcoat goes on.

Peninsulas and flood-zone lots

The same plan counts about 20% of developed parcels citywide inside the FEMA 100-year flood plain. On the Houghs Neck and Germantown planning area, bordered by Hingham Bay, Rock Island Cove, Quincy Bay and Town River Bay, 29% of developed parcels sit in coastal flood hazard areas. Squantum and Marina Bay come in at 26%.

On those lots, the lowest courses of siding, sill trim and foundation-level boards deserve a close look during the estimate. Wood that has been wetted repeatedly may be soft and need replacement before it can hold primer. If you are planning carpentry or other construction rather than just paint, the city's Flood Plain Overlay District rules in Zoning Ordinance Section 8.1 may apply, and the Building Department at (617) 376-1450 is the place to ask. Neighborhood notes for Houghs Neck, Squantum and Merrymount, whose Merrymount/Blacks Creek planning area has the most potentially impacted coastal properties in the city according to the plan, go into more detail.

Clapboard, shingle and the occasional stucco

The Massachusetts Historical Commission describes the Quincy Cottage, a story-and-a-half two-family with twin dormers, as clad in clapboard, shingle or, less often, stucco. Each takes a different approach. Clapboards are scraped, sanded at the edges of sound paint and spot-primed, with special attention to the shadow line under each board. Painted shingles need loose paint removed from the butts and any split shingles replaced. Stucco is cleaned, cracks are filled with a flexible patch, and a masonry-rated coating goes on so moisture inside the wall can escape.

On a dormered house, the dormer cheeks and the trim where they meet the roof catch weather from two directions and sit well above eye level, so peeling there is easy to miss from the sidewalk. Have them inspected up close before settling on a scope.

• Clapboard: scrape, feather-sand edges, prime bare wood, caulk vertical joints only
• Shingle: remove loose paint at the butts, replace splits, prime end grain
• Stucco: wash, patch cracks, breathable masonry coating

Scraping old paint safely

With 68.5% of local housing units built before 1980, many exteriors have early coats that may contain lead. Massachusetts treats paid work on a pre-1978 home that disturbs more than 20 square feet of exterior paint as lead-safe renovation: ground sheeting, misting instead of dry scraping, no open-flame burning and careful cleanup of chips from the yard. Where houses stand close together, that also means protecting the neighbor's driveway and garden. The lead-safe painting page describes the steps.

The National Register status of the Baxter Street district or of individual listed houses does not, by itself, put restrictions on a privately funded repaint, according to the National Park Service. Whether any city-level review applies to a specific address is worth confirming before you change a historic color scheme.

When to schedule

Most exterior coatings need surface and air temperatures above a minimum, typically around 35 to 50°F depending on the product, and a dry surface for the coat to bond. Late spring through early fall gives the widest window. A house that took a direct hit in a winter storm should be allowed to dry out for several warm days before prep starts. The post on painting exteriors in November explains what is possible late in the year, and common exterior paint failures shows what moisture does to a paint film.