Interior & Exterior Painting in Hampton, NH

Hampton sits on the Atlantic, and salt-laden air plus wind-driven rain get into every joint and end grain on a house. Coatings chalk and lose adhesion sooner here than five miles inland, trim joints open with freeze-thaw, and south and east elevations facing the water take the worst of it. Prep is what decides how long a repaint lasts.

The housing mix is unusual for the Seacoast. Streets near the beach hold small older cottages, many built as seasonal properties and later insulated and lived in year round, sitting alongside newer year-round homes and condo buildings. On the cottages we often find several generations of paint on narrow clapboard or shingle, with soft or bare wood underneath at the sills and the bottom courses. Those get washed, scraped back to a sound edge, sanded so the transition is not a visible shelf, spot-primed and caulked before a single finish coat goes on.

Seasonal use changes the calendar more than the work. Rental cottages have to be finished before the summer season starts and are easiest to work in during spring and shoulder season; year-round homes are more flexible but occupied. Either way we work the exterior while the weather holds — roughly late April into October here — and we stop early enough in the day that evening damp off the water does not land on an uncured coat.

Inside, Hampton interiors are usually straightforward rooms with a lot of trim and, in the older cottages, walls that have been patched many times. Where old repairs would telegraph through fresh paint we skim the wall flat first and say so at the estimate, because it changes the price. Vaulted and cathedral living rooms in the newer builds get the same treatment on the ceiling before it is coated.

Moisture is the recurring interior problem in seasonal properties that sit closed up. Before we paint we look for damp at exterior wall bases and window heads, because coating over a wall that is still taking on water only hides it until next spring.