Interior Painting for Sharon, MA homeowners.

The Census puts the median construction year for homes in Sharon at 1970, but that midpoint hides a wide spread. The 1950s alone account for 20.8% of the housing units in town, the largest share of any single decade in the table, while 28.7% went up between 1980 and 1999 and 14.7% date from 1939 or earlier. Each of those groups can bring different wall materials, trim profiles and old coatings into the room you want repainted.

Three questions shape an interior estimate before color comes up at all: what the walls are made of, what is already on the woodwork, and whether the house predates 1978.

Plaster, drywall, or a mix of both

Houses from before 1940 were generally finished with plaster over wood lath. Sound plaster takes paint very well, but hairline cracks, bulges, and spots where the plaster keys behind the surface have broken loose need repair before the first coat. Loose areas can often be reattached with plaster washers and screws instead of being torn out.

Postwar construction is less predictable. A house from the 1950s could have plaster, gypsum lath with a skim coat, or early drywall, and a room may have been patched later with whatever material was current at the time. On ceilings, a flat sheen hides the line where an old surface meets a newer one; on walls, eggshell is easier to wipe clean while still forgiving small irregularities.

Lead on older trim, windows and doors

By the Census count, 62.7% of Sharon's housing units were built before 1980. Not every one of those predates the 1978 federal ban on lead in residential paint, but the figure shows how many houses could carry lead on sashes, sills, baseboards, stair parts and doors, often buried under several newer coats. Friction points such as window channels and door edges are where that buried layer wears into dust.

When paid work disturbs paint in a pre-1978 home, the EPA Renovation, Repair and Painting rule calls for a certified firm, plastic containment of the work area, no open-flame burning or unshrouded power sanding, and HEPA cleanup with a verification wipe. Unless testing shows the components are free of lead, those practices apply. The lead-safe painting page explains what that looks like inside a lived-in house.

Ceilings, stairwells and woodwork

Ceilings in older rooms sometimes show brown rings from a past roof or plumbing leak. Those marks bleed through ordinary white paint, so they need a stain-blocking primer first, and if the cause was an ice dam, the leak itself has to be fixed; the ceiling stain guide covers the order of repairs.

Two-story foyers and open stairwells need planks or staging rather than a single ladder, which adds setup time. Woodwork from different eras also behaves differently under a brush: older molding may carry oil-based enamel that has to be deglossed and primed with a bonding primer before latex will hold, while trim from later decades may be primed pine or MDF that already has latex on it. The interior finish comparison sorts out which sheen belongs on walls, trim and doors.

Painting indoors through the cold months

The town's open space plan lists an average January temperature of 27°F, so winter interior work happens with the windows shut. Low-VOC paint, a box fan exhausting through one cracked window, and keeping the work area closed off keep odor manageable. Our post on ventilating with the windows closed goes through the setup, and low-VOC vs. zero-VOC paint explains what those labels mean.

One local rule does not reach indoors. The combined Historical Commission and Historic District Commission reviews only exterior work visible from a public way, so repainting rooms inside a house in one of the town's four local historic districts does not go before the commission.

If the outside needs attention too, see exterior painting in Sharon; kitchen and bath cabinets are covered on the cabinet painting page.