Interior Painting serving Sudbury and Metro West MA.

Indoors, the decade a house was built decides most of the prep. Census figures show 1,073 local housing units built in the 1950s and 1,200 in the 1960s, the two biggest decades in the table. Another 1,563 units, or 24.1%, date from 2000 or later. A room in the first group may carry sixty years of paint on its window casings; a room in the second is more likely to need nail pops, drywall seams and builder-grade flat paint addressed.

Only 5.7% of units were built in 1939 or earlier, but the town's historic inventory recorded 297 buildings older than 1946, about a fifth of them from the 1700s. Houses of that age can have horsehair plaster on wood lath and trim carrying many hand-brushed layers.

Lead dust is an indoor problem first

More than half of housing here, 53.7%, was built before 1980, which is the closest the Census gets to the 1978 federal ban on lead paint in homes. When paid work in a pre-1978 home disturbs more than six square feet of paint in a room, EPA lead-safe practices apply. Sanding a set of window stools and a door frame can cross that line, and window replacement is covered at any size.

In practice that means plastic over floors and doorways, misting before scraping, sanders with HEPA dust collection, and a HEPA vacuum and wet wipe at the end of each day rather than a broom. The lead-safe painting page lays out what to expect, including how to keep children and pets clear of the work area.

Plaster, drywall and ceilings

Light skimming across a ceiling from a window exposes patches and seams, so ceilings get the same patch-and-prime attention as walls. If the plan includes color changes in several rooms, the ceilings are usually painted first, then trim, then walls, so cut lines stay crisp.

• Hairline cracks in plaster: opened slightly, filled with a setting compound, taped if they recur, then primed
• Plaster pulling away from the lath: reattached with plaster washers before any skim coat
• Drywall nail pops and seam ridges: reset, re-taped and feathered so they disappear under a flat ceiling finish
• Water stains on ceilings: sealed with a stain-blocking primer once the leak is fixed, or they bleed through new paint
• Glossy old trim: cleaned and scuff-sanded or primed with a bonding primer so the new coat does not peel

Historic rules stop at the front door

The Historic Districts Commission reviews only exterior features visible from a public street, way or place. Interior colors, trim finishes and wallpaper removal inside a district house need no commission approval. The exception to watch is a window: repainting or replacing sashes is interior work on one side and exterior work on the other, so anything that changes how the window looks from outside belongs in the exterior painting conversation.

Scheduling around an occupied house

If you are living in the house while it is painted, working room by room, keeping one bathroom and the kitchen usable, and choosing low-odor products all help. The guides on painting with kids and pets at home and preparing a home for interior painting cover the practical side, and winter interior painting explains why the cold months suit indoor work.