Interior Painting serving Princeton and Metro West MA.

Census figures sort the town's 1,417 housing units into two large groups with a thin middle. About 410 were built in 1939 or earlier, while the 1970s and 1980s together added 566. Only 172 units date from the 1940s through the 1960s, and the median year built is 1975.

That split matters indoors because the two groups need different prep. A room in a pre-war house raises questions about plaster, layers of old paint and lead. A room in a 1980s house is usually about drywall seams, nail pops and whether the original trim enamel will accept a new coat. A good estimate names which problems your rooms actually have before anyone talks about color.

Plaster walls in the oldest houses

Houses from before 1940 were built before drywall became standard, so they may still have plaster on wood lath behind the paint. Plaster is hard and durable, but it moves with the framing. Hairline cracks over doors and windows, bulges where the plaster has let go of the lath, and ceilings that sound hollow when tapped all need attention before paint goes on.

Loose sections can be reattached with plaster washers or adhesive, and cracks are taped and filled with a setting-type compound rather than lightweight spackle, which tends to crack again along the same line. Some of the town's oldest buildings are much older than 1940. In the Russell Corner Historic District, most of the 15 contributing buildings went up before 1830, and the oldest dates to about 1748. Rooms that old can carry many generations of paint, so a test patch shows whether a new coat will stick or lift the old ones.

Lead dust and the 1978 line

Lead-based paint was banned for residential use in 1978. The Census groups construction by decade, and 818 of the town's housing units, or 57.7%, were built before 1980. Not every one of those houses has lead paint on its walls, but any of them could, especially on window sashes, door frames, stair parts and baseboards that were painted early and repainted many times.

Indoors, the risk comes from dust. Sanding, scraping and cutting into old painted wood release fine particles that settle on floors and sills. Work in pre-1978 rooms follows containment, cleanup and verification steps described on our lead-safe painting page, and testing a few surfaces first tells you which parts of the house need that treatment.

Drywall and trim in 1970s and 1980s houses

The 1980s were the busiest building decade after the pre-war group, with 330 units, and the 1970s added 236. Houses from those years are likely to have drywall, where the usual fixes are popped screws, cracked corner bead, tape seams that show through flat paint and scuffed hallways.

Trim from that period may be finished in oil-based enamel. Latex applied directly over oil can peel off in sheets, so the trim gets a quick test with rubbing alcohol: if the finish softens, it is latex; if not, it gets cleaned, scuff-sanded and primed with a bonding primer. Our comparison of latex and oil-based paint covers the difference in more detail.

• Patch, tape and sand drywall damage, then spot-prime repairs
• Caulk gaps where trim meets walls
• Degloss and prime old enamel before recoating
• Two finish coats on walls, ceilings cut in by hand

Ceilings, stairwells and timing

Ceilings show every flaw under a raking light, so they are best done first with a flat paint made for ceilings. Water stains from winter ice dams have to be sealed with a stain-blocking primer or they bleed back through; our post on ceiling stains after ice dam leaks explains why. Tall stairwells need planks or a stair ladder set up safely over the steps.

Interior painting can go ahead in any season. Low-odor paints and a plan for airing out rooms make winter work practical even with the windows mostly closed, as covered in painting indoors during winter.

Planning your project

AJ Painting Services is based in Ashland, licensed and insured, and the site visit and written estimate cost nothing. For the outside of the house, see exterior painting in Princeton.