Once more than 6 square feet of your painted surface gets disturbed in a home built before 1978, the job changes. We seal the room off, we never dry sand, and cleanup is a HEPA vacuum and a wet wipe. The rule behind that is 454 CMR 22.00. It adds $350 to $1,200 to a painting job we would otherwise price at $2,000 to $6,500.
The typical Lynn house went up around 1946, so almost every kitchen you ask Custom Cabinets Lynn to paint is older than 1978. That puts your kitchen under the state's lead-safe rule, 454 CMR 22.00. So we price the lead work as a normal line rather than an exception, and we would rather show you that number than bury it in a total.
That number is smaller than it sounds. Six square feet is roughly four of your cabinet doors. Sanding one wall of original cabinets clears that in about ten minutes, so a kitchen job of any size is inside the rule from the moment we start.
What changes on your job is the method. We seal your room and close off the doorways. Dry sanding is out, and so is burning or heat-stripping the paint, so we strip with chemicals or wet-sand instead. At the end we HEPA vacuum and wet wipe the whole area before the plastic comes down.
The rule exists because lead dust does not stay in the kitchen, and it rides the air and your shoes into rooms nobody worked in. Skip the containment and you pay for it several times over in the cleanup afterwards.
Here is what that means for your quote. A quote that leaves the lead-safe line off is not cheaper than ours. It is a different job. Our cabinet cost guide carries the figure, and painting without sanding covers what we use instead of sandpaper.
Related questions
Does the rule apply if my cabinets were repainted recently?
It applies to your house, not to the top coat. Anything built before 1978 is inside it. Nobody can see what sits under a modern coat on original cabinets, so we work as though lead is there.
Does refacing trigger it too?
Less often, because refacing covers your old paint instead of sanding it off, though it does apply where that paint has to be sanded down so the veneer lies flat. We tell you which at the estimate rather than on the day.
Can I strip the doors myself outside?
That is your call to make. The rule covers the work rather than the person doing it. What we will say is that containment and cleanup are most of the $350 to $1,200. That is the part you should not let anyone skip.