Exterior Painting in Taunton, MA.

Roughly one housing unit in three here (34.8%, per Census estimates) was built in 1939 or earlier, and the city's median construction year is 1965. On an exterior, that age shows up as layers: original wood under decades of coatings, trim that may have been patched more than once, and on some houses vinyl or aluminum siding installed over the original clapboards. A new paint job lasts only as long as the weakest layer underneath it.

The first question on any of these houses is therefore not color. It is whether the existing film is still bonded to the wood. Where paint is curling or alligatored, it has to come off down to a firm edge, and bare spots need primer before topcoats go on.

Streets with National Register listings

Taunton has a long list of National Register entries. The Wikipedia list built from National Park Service data shows 97 of them, and 85 share the date July 5, 1984, when the Taunton Multiple Resource Area was listed. About half are individual houses, with Dean, Winthrop and Summer Streets among the addresses that recur. One example, the Charles R. Atwood House on Dean Street, is recorded as Italianate, with a period of significance of 1850 to 1874.

Two districts sit at the center: the Taunton Green Historic District, noted for Late Victorian and revival-era architecture, and Church Green. On Victorian and revival-era houses, much of the exterior labor tends to go into trim: brackets, cornices, window hoods, and porch columns with several profiles that have to be scraped by hand rather than sanded flat.

We could not confirm whether the city runs any local historic district review over exterior changes. If your house is on the list, call the city before changing materials or removing original trim.

What the local weather does to paint

The NOAA station named for the city records 48.77 inches of precipitation in a normal year, with 79.9 days bringing a tenth of an inch or more, and 127.8 nights at or below freezing. Water that gets behind paint through open joints or failed caulk freezes in those nights and pushes the film off from behind. Sealing end grain, re-caulking butt joints and fixing gutters matters as much as the paint itself.

For scheduling, normal highs are 69.5°F in May and 75.0°F in September, with lows of 47.8°F and 54.3°F in those months. October lows average 43.0°F, so late-season work needs mornings that warm up before coating and enough afternoon sun for the paint to set before dew. The Taunton River is tidal as far up as the city, but this is an inland river setting, not open coastline.

Lead-safe scraping on pre-1978 siding

Census counts put 64.4% of the city's housing in buildings from before 1980. The federal lead rule applies to homes built before 1978 and covers paid exterior work that disturbs more than 20 square feet of painted surface, which nearly any full repaint does. That means plastic sheeting on the ground, wet scraping, no open-flame burning, and a cleanup check before the job closes out. Details are on our lead-safe painting page.

Two-, three- and four-unit buildings

Some 29.0% of local housing units are in buildings with two to four units. These exteriors are taller, often have porches stacked on each floor, and the people living there all need to know when ladders and staging will be outside their windows. Rear stairs and upper porch ceilings deserve a close look during the estimate, since they are hard to see from the ground.

If your house also needs work inside, see the interior painting page. For a back deck or porch floor, the deck page covers stains and floor enamels. Neighborhood notes are on the Whittenton and Weir Village pages.