Interior Painting in Stoneham, MA.

The Census Bureau puts the median construction year of local housing at 1964, and 70.3% of the town's 10,196 housing units were built before 1980. That second number is the one to keep in mind before anyone sands a windowsill: the EPA's lead-safe rule covers housing built before 1978, so a room in one of those houses may have lead paint under the current color.

At the other end of the range, 24.6% of units date from 1939 or earlier. A room in one of those can have walls, woodwork and ceiling finishes that are very different from those in a house built during the post-war boom, and the prep changes with them.

Rooms from four different centuries of building

The town's 2024 Historic Preservation Plan traces surviving houses back to about 1700, including the Jonathan Green House on Perkins Street, dated to around 1720. The plan describes colonial survivors as heavy hand-cut timber frames, often two and a half stories around a central chimney. Rooms in a frame like that can have sloping floors and out-of-square corners, so cutting a clean line between wall and ceiling takes patience rather than tape alone.

The shoemaking period left two kinds of houses: Queen Anne, Italianate and Second Empire houses for affluent owners, and modest one-and-a-half to two-story gable-end cottages for working families, with clusters of the latter remaining around Summer Street, Pond Street and Tremont Street. Shingle Style and Craftsman houses followed in the first half of the 20th century, and Capes and Ranches filled the subdivisions built after the war.

What the walls and woodwork need

Older plaster is repaired before it is painted. Hairline cracks are opened and filled, loose sections are reattached or patched, and a primer suited to the patch material keeps it from showing through as a dull spot. Ceilings in older rooms are inspected for sagging before anyone rolls paint across them, because a heavy coat on loose plaster can pull it down further.

Painted woodwork, from Victorian casings to Craftsman trim, is cleaned, deglossed and sanded so new paint grips the old finish. If the existing trim is oil-based, a bonding primer goes on before a waterborne enamel. Doors are taken down or painted in place depending on the hardware and how they hang.

• Walls and ceilings, including stairwells and high entries
• Plaster crack and drywall repair before paint
• Trim, casings, baseboards, doors and built-ins
• Primer selection for oil-to-latex conversions
• Furniture moved, floors covered, rooms cleaned at the end of each day

Lead-safe work in older rooms

The EPA's Renovation, Repair and Painting Rule applies when paid work disturbs paint in housing built before 1978. Inside, the exemption covers only minor jobs that disturb 6 square feet or less of paint per room, and window replacement is always covered. Sanding a set of double-hung window sashes, or scraping a stairway's handrail and balusters, can pass that limit quickly.

Covered work means plastic containment, no open-flame burning or power sanding without HEPA collection, HEPA vacuuming and a cleaning check before the room is handed back. Our lead-safe painting page explains the steps. Families with young children, or anyone planning work during the winter months, may find our winter interior painting notes and painting with kids and pets at home useful.

Related work on the same house

A kitchen repaint often raises the question of the cabinets; that has its own process on our cabinet painting page for Stoneham. Siding, trim and windows on the outside are handled on the exterior painting page, and unit owners in condominium buildings can read the condo painting page for association rules.