House Painters in Edison, NJ

Edison is a Middlesex County township of about 30 square miles, with the Raritan River along its southern edge and the borough of Metuchen set entirely inside it. It was incorporated in 1870 as Raritan Township and renamed in 1954 for the inventor who had worked at Menlo Park. Thomas Edison moved his operations there in the spring of 1876. The phonograph followed in November 1877, and on October 21, 1879, a test bulb in the laboratory burned for about thirteen and a half hours. Edison is split almost evenly between three ZIP codes, 08817, 08820 and 08837.

Most of the housing came after the Second World War. The Census Bureau's American Community Survey for 2020 to 2024 counts about 39,200 homes in Edison. The 1980s were the busiest single decade, with 24 percent of them, and the 1950s and 1960s together add another 34 percent. Just over half, 56 percent, were built before 1980, and only 6 percent before 1940. A few colonial houses are older still: the Laing House of Plainfield Plantation, the Benjamin Shotwell House and the Homestead Farm at Oak Ridge are on the National Register. The township code gives its Historic Preservation Commission an advisory job. It keeps an inventory of historic sites, advises the Planning Board and the Board of Adjustment on applications in the historic preservation zone, and recommends approval or denial of permits referred to it. If you think your house is on that inventory, ask the township before planning exterior changes. In a condominium or townhouse community, the association's color rules come first.

Flooding touches only a small part of Edison. The township's Strategic Recovery Planning Report, written after Sandy, says most land along the Raritan is wetland or floodplain and lightly built. Sandy's surge reached the low ground at Raritan Center and a small residential area by the Highland Park border, while the wind brought down trees and left 80 percent of the township without power. For most houses here, paint wears from sun, rain and winter rather than from salt or surge.

The two big building periods set the work. A 1950s cape or 1960s split-level has usually been painted many times, so outside we scrape back to sound paint, prime bare wood and recaulk open joints before premium Benjamin Moore or Sherwin-Williams finish coats. Inside, plaster and early drywall often need cracks and seams repaired first. The 1980s colonials are on their second or third repaint, with builder-grade flat walls, worn stair rails and oak kitchen cabinets that take a sprayed enamel well. On anything built before 1978, the EPA's Renovation, Repair and Painting rule applies: paid work that disturbs more than six square feet of paint in a room, or more than twenty square feet outside, needs a certified firm. NJ Painting Co. is not EPA Lead-Safe Certified, so if your Edison house needs that much old paint disturbed, we will tell you at the estimate that the job calls for a certified contractor.

NJ Painting Co. is a family-owned company based in Morganville, in Monmouth County, and every Edison estimate is free and in writing.