South Attleboro Painters — At the Rhode Island line

South Attleboro sits at the bottom of the city, where U.S. 1 and Newport Avenue (Route 1A) cross into Rhode Island. The commuter rail station at 1315 Newport Avenue, opened in 1990 under the Route 1A overpass, is about 500 feet from the state line. On Route 1, the old Boston Post Road, Wightman's Diner began as a lunch wagon in 1923 and was billed in the 1930s as the "largest diner in the world" before it closed in 1946.

No neighborhood-level architectural survey of South Attleboro turned up in our research, so the clearest picture of its homes comes from the Census. Tract 6311.01, which takes in the station area on Newport Avenue, has about 1,509 housing units. Of those, 87.7% were built before 1980 and 26.2% in 1939 or earlier, both higher than the citywide 61.2% and 24.1%. Only 6.0% date from 2000 or later. Single-family detached houses make up 46.8% of units and two-family buildings 12.1%. Mobile homes account for an estimated 29.4% of units, though that estimate carries a wide margin of error (±223 units). A park directory lists Eastlande Mobile Home Park at 1346 Newport Avenue.

Two very different house types

A house from before 1940 and a manufactured home need different products and prep. Wood clapboard or shingle calls for scraping, spot-priming and an exterior acrylic. Metal or vinyl skins on a manufactured home need cleaning and a bonding primer suited to the substrate, and on vinyl the color has to stay within the light-reflectance range the coating maker allows.

Older stock than the city average

With close to nine in ten units in the station-area tract built before 1980, a painting job here has a good chance of reaching paint from the lead era. Under EPA rules, paid work that disturbs over 20 square feet outside or 6 square feet inside a pre-1978 home requires lead-safe methods; read our lead-safe painting page for the steps.

Two-families and shared walls

One in eight units in Tract 6311.01 is in a two-unit building. On an owner-occupied two-family, plan exterior color with both households in mind. If the other unit is rented, give the tenants notice about access and window work before the job starts.

Highway and rail frontage

If your siding faces Route 1, Route 1A or the rail line and has a film of road grime, it should be washed and left to dry thoroughly before new paint goes on, or the coating can fail to bond.