Fair Haven is a Monmouth County borough on the south shore of the Navesink River, with one ZIP code, 07704. It was formed in 1912 from part of Shrewsbury Township. The borough covers a little over two square miles, and about a quarter of that is water. By the middle of the nineteenth century steamboats on the Red Bank to New York run were calling at Chandler's Dock, bringing visitors in and carrying local oysters to the city.
Two buildings in the borough are on the National Register of Historic Places. Fisk Chapel on Cedar Avenue was rebuilt in 1882 for the AME Bethel congregation, in an area the New Jersey Historic Trust describes as settled by a free black population; after the congregation built a new church in 1974, the borough moved the old chapel to its present site, and it was listed in 1975. The Players Boat Club on River Road, which dates to 1910, was listed in 2019. Fair Haven has a Historic Preservation Commission, described in local reporting as an advisory board to the governing body. We have not found anything showing that it reviews paint colors on private houses, so ask Borough Hall if your house is on an inventory and you are planning bigger exterior changes.
The houses are mostly from the middle of the last century. The Census Bureau's American Community Survey for 2020 to 2024 counts about 2,100 homes in Fair Haven and dates 30 percent of them to the 1950s, 14 percent to the 1940s and 19 percent to 1939 or earlier. Altogether 74 percent were built before 1980, and about 10 percent are from the 2010s.
The river shapes the exterior work. Sandy left boats wedged on the Navesink shore in Fair Haven, and the Fair Haven Dock needed repairs the following winter. Houses near the water take damp air and wind off the river, so we wash mildew and grime off, let the siding dry, scrape back to sound paint and prime bare wood before premium Benjamin Moore or Sherwin-Williams exterior coats. Inside an older house, the work is usually plaster and drywall repair, trim and doors with many layers of paint, and kitchen cabinet refinishing where the cabinets are worth keeping. For three houses in four, the federal lead rule is part of the plan. Under the EPA's Renovation, Repair and Painting rule, paid work that disturbs more than six square feet of paint in a room, or more than twenty square feet outside, on a house built before 1978 must be done by a certified firm. NJ Painting Co. is not EPA Lead-Safe Certified, so where a Fair Haven job goes past those limits, we will tell you at the estimate that a certified contractor needs to do it.
NJ Painting Co. is a family-owned company based in Morganville, and every Fair Haven estimate is free.
We also have dedicated pages on kitchen cabinet painting in Monmouth County, exterior painting in Monmouth County and interior painting in Monmouth County.
