Interior Painting in Newton, MA.

The median house in this city was built around 1942, and nearly half of all homes date to 1939 or earlier. That changes what an interior paint job involves. Rooms of that age were typically finished in plaster over lath rather than drywall, and under the current color there can be many decades of earlier coats, some of them oil and some likely lead-based.

A fresh coat on those rooms looks good for about as long as the surface underneath holds together. Most of the effort on an interior job here goes into finding hairline cracks, loose plaster keys and failing old layers before anyone opens a can of finish paint.

Plaster walls and ceilings

Old plaster is hard, dense and quiet, and worth keeping. It also moves with the seasons. Ceiling cracks that run along the lath lines, bulges near a stair, and spiderweb cracking around door headers are common in prewar rooms. Paint alone will not hold those together.

We tap and press suspect areas to see whether plaster has let go of the lath. Sound cracks get opened, taped with mesh and filled with setting compound; loose sections are reattached with plaster washers before patching. Ceilings with many old coats sometimes show alligatoring or peeling where a later latex went over oil without a bonding primer, and those areas need scraping and priming rather than another topcoat.

If your house also has a newer addition finished in drywall, the two surfaces take paint differently. We prime patches and new board separately so the sheen matches from the old room into the new one.

Lead paint is the default assumption

About 80% of the city's housing was built before 1980, and lead paint was not banned for residential use until 1978. In a house that old, we treat sanding, scraping and paint removal on original surfaces as lead work until a test says otherwise.

Massachusetts sets a clear line: paid work in pre-1978 housing that disturbs more than six square feet of painted surface in a room must be done under lead-safe renovation rules, with a certified supervisor on site. In practice, that means plastic sheeting sealed to the floor and doorways, misting instead of dry sanding, HEPA vacuums, and a cleaning check before the room goes back into use. Our lead-safe painting page walks through the steps and what to expect if you have young children at home.

• Window sashes, sills and stools: friction surfaces where old paint wears into dust
• Stair treads, risers and balusters on original staircases
• Door jambs and casings that have been repainted many times
• Radiator covers, built-ins and baseboard in prewar rooms

Trim from different decades

Newton's housing came in waves. The largest is the prewar stock, and the second largest is the 1950s, when about one in eight of today's homes was built. Each era has its own woodwork. Prewar houses often have wide, layered casings, picture rail and paneled doors with heavy buildup in the corners. Fifties houses tend toward flatter, simpler trim, often painted from the start, and sometimes slab doors.

Heavy buildup is the main issue on older trim. When detail has been softened by layers, careful scraping and feathering of failed areas brings back some crispness, but full stripping of original trim in a pre-1978 house is a bigger, lead-regulated job we would discuss with you separately. For most rooms, a good bonding primer and a durable enamel are the right answer.

Planning around how you live

Seven in ten homes here are lived in by their owners, and many interior jobs happen with the family still at home. We work room by room so bedrooms and the kitchen are back in use at the end of the day whenever the scope allows.

Two-family houses make up roughly 15% of the city's housing units. If you own one and live upstairs while a tenant is downstairs, interior work in either unit means notice, access times and keeping shared stairs clear and clean.

Planning the outside too? The exterior painting page for Newton covers siding, trim and historic-district questions.