House Painters in Mount Holly, NJ

Mount Holly is the county seat of Burlington County, a township of under three square miles with one ZIP code, 08060. It began as Northampton Township in 1688 and was incorporated in 1798 as one of New Jersey's first 104 townships. An early settler dammed the Rancocas Creek here for a gristmill and sawmill, and the mill race dug by Edward Gaskill and his sons between 1720 and 1723 still follows its original course. The Burlington County Prison on High Street, designed by Robert Mills and built around 1811, is on the National Register.

The houses are old. The Census Bureau's American Community Survey for 2020 to 2024 counts about 3,700 homes in Mount Holly and dates 30 percent of them to 1939 or earlier and another 26 percent to the 1950s. In all, 76 percent were built before 1980. The Mount Holly Historic District, about 260 acres of the downtown, was placed on the State Register in 1972 and the National Register in 1973.

Locally, Mount Holly has a Historic Preservation Commission and two districts in its code: the High Street Historic District, which takes in every property with frontage on High Street, and a wider Municipal Historic District. Each building is classed as key, contributing or noncontributing, and paint is treated differently for each. As the code reads in an online copy, repainting a noncontributing building is exempt whatever the color; repainting a key building is exempt only if the color does not change its appearance; and on a contributing building in the High Street district, a color change visible from High Street or a connecting street needs administrative approval. Confirm your building's class with the township before you choose colors.

The creek matters too. The National Weather Service notes that tidal influence on the North Branch of the Rancocas reaches the dam at Mount Holly, and in an April 2007 nor'easter unusually high tides added to flooding along tidal sections of the creek, Mount Holly among them. On older wood in a damp setting we wash and dry the walls first, scrape back to sound paint, replace failed caulk, flag rotted sills, and prime bare wood before premium Benjamin Moore or Sherwin-Williams finish coats. With three homes in four built before 1980, the lead rule is a real factor. Federal law, through the EPA's Renovation, Repair and Painting rule, requires a certified firm for paid work that disturbs more than six square feet of paint inside a room, or more than twenty square feet outside, in housing from before 1978. NJ Painting Co. is not EPA Lead-Safe Certified, so a Mount Holly job that needs old paint scraped or sanded beyond those limits has to go to a certified contractor; we will tell you that at the estimate.

Inside, plaster walls, tall baseboards and original staircases get patched, sanded and brushed. NJ Painting Co. is family-owned and based in Morganville, and every Mount Holly estimate is free.