Interior Painting serving Braintree and Metro West MA.

Census estimates put the median Braintree home's construction year at 1957, but that midpoint hides a wide spread. Roughly 27.5% of the town's 15,163 housing units date from 1939 or earlier, another 1,452 went up in the 1940s, and 2,685 more in the 1950s. Only 14.3% were built in 2000 or later. Knowing which of those groups your house falls into matters, because the surface under the paint changes with the decade.

A room in a mid-1800s Greek Revival cottage on Washington Street and a bedroom in a 1960s split-level need different patching, different primers and different care with dust. The sections below walk through what to expect.

Plaster in the older houses

In a house from the 1930s or earlier, the walls may be plaster over wood lath rather than drywall. Plaster holds paint well when it is sound, but it moves with the seasons, and hairline cracks reopen if they are only filled with spackle. Loose sections need to be reattached or patched with setting-type compound, and a bonding primer goes over any repair before finish coats.

Ceilings deserve their own look. A sagging spot or a crack that follows a straight line can mean the plaster keys have let go from the lath, and painting over it only hides the warning. Water stains from an old roof or bathroom leak need a stain-blocking primer, or they bleed back through latex in a few weeks.

• Crack repair with tape and setting compound, not spackle alone
• Stain-blocking primer over old water marks
• Bonding primer on patched plaster and glossy oil trim
• Caulk only where trim meets wall, not in plaster cracks

Lead dust and pre-1978 rooms

About three out of four Braintree housing units, 74.7%, were built before 1980, and federal rules treat paint in housing built before 1978 as a lead concern. Under the EPA's Renovation, Repair and Painting Rule, paid work that disturbs paint in those homes has to follow lead-safe practices: plastic containment, no dry sanding or open-flame removal, and a careful cleanup and verification at the end.

Inside the house, the surfaces of most concern are the ones that rub, get bumped or get chewed: window sashes and stools, door jambs, stair treads and baseboards. In an older home, those may still carry original paint layers under newer coats. Our lead-safe painting page explains what the process looks like when you live there during the job.

Trim, doors and woodwork by era

The 1979 state survey of Braintree records modest Queen Anne houses on Liberty Street and larger Colonial Revival and Queen Anne houses on River Street and West Street, along with earlier Federal-period Capes and Greek Revival cottages concentrated along Washington Street. Interiors from those periods can have wide casings, paneled doors and many layers of oil-based enamel. Latex will not stick directly to old oil gloss, so the trim gets a scuff-sand under lead-safe controls and an adhesion primer first.

Houses from the 1950s and 1960s may have narrower, simpler trim, and sometimes stained wood that owners want painted. That switch is permanent in practice, so it is worth deciding room by room. Our guide to interior paint finishes covers which sheen holds up on trim, walls and ceilings.

Planning the job around the household

Interior work can run year-round, and colder months are a reasonable time to schedule it; see our notes on painting interiors in a Massachusetts winter. Emptying shelves, taking down wall hangings and deciding colors before the start date keeps each room's turnaround short.

If the house sits in Braintree Highlands, East Braintree or South Braintree, the neighborhood pages describe the housing found there. For outside work, see our Braintree exterior painting page.