Exterior Painting throughout Reading, MA.

The National Register nomination for the town's historic resources puts it plainly: Reading "has traditionally built in wood, except for a few, usually public buildings." First Period houses are heavy timber frames sheathed in clapboards; some Greek Revival houses used flushboard siding; mansard-roofed Second Empire cottages date from the 1870s; Queen Anne and Colonial Revival houses followed in the late 1800s, then, less often, Craftsman and bungalow designs around 1910 to 1920.

On a house that still wears its original wood, the job is mostly about painted wood. Clapboards, corner boards, window casings, porch columns and shingled gables all expand, contract and take on moisture, and paint that can't keep up cracks and peels. The prep below is what keeps a new coat bonded.

Prep on old clapboards

With 26.9% of the town's housing units built in 1939 or earlier, many exteriors carry a long paint history. Our post on common exterior paint failures shows what blistering, alligatoring and cross-grain cracking say about the layers underneath.

• Wash the siding and let it dry fully before scraping
• Scrape loose and lifting paint back to a firm edge, then feather-sand the transitions
• Probe sills, lower clapboards and porch parts for soft wood; repair or replace rotted sections with matching wood
• Spot-prime bare wood the same day it is exposed
• Caulk open joints at trim, but leave the lap seams under clapboards open so the wall can dry
• Apply two finish coats on weather-facing sides

Historic district rules

The town has a local historic district under Chapter 40C, centered on West Street, where the first settlement stood and the militia mustered on April 19, 1775. Its design guidelines, updated in February 2024, say most exterior construction visible from a public way needs Historic District Commission review, but paint color and ordinary maintenance and repair are exempt.

The catch is in the definition: ordinary maintenance does not include replacing materials or changing design or size. Even swapping rotted clapboards in kind is replacement under that wording, so it is worth a call to the commission first; switching a wall to a different material clearly needs review. The guidelines discourage aluminum, vinyl and other synthetic siding and ask that deteriorated historic features be repaired rather than replaced.

The two National Register districts, around the Common and along Woburn Street, are a separate matter. The National Park Service says that listing places no federal restrictions or requirements on a private owner unless a project involves federal funding or permits, so the listing does not by itself regulate your paint job; state or local rules may still apply.

Lead-safe work outside

Three in four of the town's housing units (74.7%) were built before 1980, the closest census figure to the 1978 lead cutoff. On the outside of a pre-1978 house, the EPA's rule applies when paid work disturbs more than 20 square feet of paint. Ground sheeting, wet scraping, no open-flame burning and daily cleanup of chips keep that paint out of the soil and the garden. Details are on our lead-safe page.

Shade, trees and timing

The town has been a Tree City USA since 1985. Any wall under a heavy canopy dries slowly after rain and is where mildew and green algae show up first, so those elevations need a mildewcide wash and extra drying time before priming.

Paint needs dry wood and air and surface temperatures within the label's range, which in eastern Massachusetts usually rules out midwinter. Our posts on the best time of year to paint and painting in November go into the limits. For porches and decks, see deck staining and painting in Reading; for houses near the Common, see our downtown Reading page.