If Your House Predates 1978, the Rules Are Different

Age is the first indicator: lead paint was banned for residential use in 1978, so a house built before then may have it in its older layers, and the earlier the build the more likely. A great deal of Ontario’s housing near the historic core falls into that window.

You can have it tested, or a contractor can presume lead is present and simply work to lead-safe practices regardless. Presuming is frequently the practical route because testing costs money and, if the result is positive, leads to exactly the same working method. What matters is that the decision is made deliberately rather than by nobody thinking about it. If your house is pre-1978 and a contractor has not raised the subject at all, that tells you something about how they intend to prepare the surfaces.

Containing the dust and chips, and cleaning them up properly. In practice that means sheeting the ground beneath the work area to catch what comes off, using controlled removal methods rather than dry open sanding or uncontained power sanding, keeping people and pets out of the immediate area while work is under way, and cleaning to a defined standard at the end rather than sweeping up the obvious pieces.

The federal rule requires firms doing this work on pre-1978 housing to be certified and to follow those practices where the disturbance exceeds a small threshold. From your side the visible differences are ground sheeting, a tidier site, and a slightly longer job. The invisible difference is that lead-bearing chips and dust are not left in the soil beside your entry path, which is where children play and where it stays for a very long time.

Somewhat, and it is worth being clear where the money goes: containment materials, a more controlled removal method, and a longer cleanup. It is not a large proportion of a repaint but it is not nothing either.

The comparison worth making is against a bid that omits it. A contractor scraping a 1950s house with no ground protection is producing a cheaper number by leaving the cost on your property rather than by working more efficiently. If two quotes on a pre-1978 house differ substantially, that is one of the first places to look. Ask each bidder directly how they intend to contain the prep — the answers separate them quickly, and the question is entirely reasonable to ask.

No. Ontario Ranch housing is modern construction, well after the 1978 cutoff, so lead-safe requirements are not in play and the job is an ordinary exterior repaint.

What matters on those houses instead is the usual set: how the existing coating is holding, whether the stucco has movement cracking, the condition of composite trim and fascia, and colour approval if the community has architectural control. The whole job is shorter and cheaper than the equivalent work on an older house, which is the practical reason the two should never be quoted from the same template. If somebody gives you the same price per square foot on a 2015 house and a 1952 one, at least one of those numbers is wrong.

On a modern single-storey house in reasonable condition, several days: wash, dry, repair, prime and two coats. Two storeys or heavy repair extends it. On a pre-1978 house with containment and controlled prep, add time — the setup and the cleanup are both longer, and the removal itself is slower than open sanding.

Weather sets the outer limits. Coatings have application temperature ranges at both ends, and paint applied to a surface that is too hot will not form its film properly however good the product is. In the Inland Valley that rules out the middle of summer afternoons on sun-facing elevations, which is a scheduling constraint rather than an excuse. A contractor who will paint any wall at any hour in August is not doing you a favour.

Yes, and on Ontario’s older housing that is usually the more important half. CSLB #1105333 is a Class B General Building licence, covering wood and fascia repair, trim replacement and stucco patching alongside the coating, with licensed specialty trades coordinated where a scope needs them.

Painting over failed wood is the most common way a good-looking repaint fails within two years. Split fascia, a rotted trim end, a window sill that has lost its integrity — these do not stop deteriorating because there is fresh paint on them, and the coating fails first at exactly those points. A painting-only contractor can only paint what is there. Being able to repair means the estimate reflects what the house needs rather than what can be covered up. Free estimate, and financing if the full scope is larger than you planned.