Renovation

Renovating an Older Quincy House

A room of plaster weighs several times what the same room of drywall does. That single fact reshapes every container decision in this city.

Why Quincy is different

Quincy got rich early. River trade, milling and manufacturing built a town of substantial houses in the middle of the nineteenth century, and an unusual amount of it is still standing — the East End Historic District is one of the largest in the country, and there is fine older building well beyond its boundaries.

That is a genuine pleasure to work around. It also means that a renovation here is frequently not the job people are expecting, because the materials inside the walls are nothing like a modern house.

This is the single biggest difference between sizing a job in Quincy and sizing the same job in a post-war suburb, and it is worth understanding before you book anything.

⚠️ Plaster and lath changes the arithmetic

The headline fact.

Plaster is a wet-applied mineral material, applied thick, over wooden lath, often in three coats. Drywall is a thin gypsum sheet. They are not comparable loads.

What this means in practice:

• Size DOWN, not up. A 10 or 15 yard part-filled with plaster will hit its weight allowance while there is still visible space above the rail.
• Take volume through swaps. Two 15 yard loads are the right shape for a plaster strip-out; one 30 yard is not, because it cannot legally be hauled once it is full of plaster.
• Do not judge by eye. The most common overage we see in this city is somebody looking at a half-full container of plaster and adding more.

Tell us it is plaster when you book. It changes the recommendation immediately and it saves money.

What else is heavier than you expect

Plaster is the big one, but an older Quincy house has more where that came from:

• Dimensional lumber. Old framing is genuinely full-size and denser than modern equivalents.
• Cast iron plumbing. Soil stacks and radiators weigh many times what plastic and modern fittings do — and they are worth pulling as scrap rather than burying in a mixed load.
• Mortar beds under bathroom tile. An older tiled bathroom often has an inch or more of mortar under the surface.
• Heart pine flooring. Dense, heavy, and frequently worth saving rather than skipping.
• Slate and clay tile roofing, which turns up on the finer houses and is several times the weight of composition shingle.
• Limestone foundations and steps — quarried locally, and about as heavy as building material gets.

Anything in that list belongs in a small container, kept clean, part-filled.

⚠️ Test before you demolish

The most consequential paragraph on this page, and it applies to a great deal of housing in this city.

In any building predating 1980 — which is most of the older neighborhoods, and effectively all of the historic districts — have the following tested before demolition begins:

• Floor tile and the adhesive under it
• Pipe lagging and duct insulation
• Boiler and furnace insulation — very common in houses with original heating
• Siding and roofing felt
• Textured ceilings

Asbestos-containing material never goes in a general container. It requires proper handling, packaging and usually a licensed abatement contractor, and the route for it is not a roll-off on your driveway.

Testing first costs a fraction of what discovering it mid-demolition costs — in money, in delay, and in the awkward conversation about what has already gone in the box. There is also lead paint to think about on anything of this age, which is a separate precaution and a real one if children are in the house.

Check before you change the outside

Work inside your own walls is generally your own business. Work on the outside of a contributing property in a historic district may not be.

Before you commit to replacing windows, altering a porch, changing siding or reroofing a historic property, find out what review applies to your address. It affects the schedule far more than the container does, and it is far cheaper to ask first than to undo work afterwards.

The City's Planning and Development department is the place to start, and there is an active preservation community in Quincy that generally knows more about these houses than anyone.

Separately, remember the permits that always apply: building, and demolition, which frequently carries asbestos conditions of its own. And call 811 before any excavation.

Salvage before you skip

We would genuinely rather see good material leave a house than come to us, and older Quincy houses are full of it.

• Doors, especially panelled interior doors and their hardware.
• Mantels and fireplace surrounds.
• Trim, casing and baseboard — old-growth timber in profiles nobody makes any more.
• Heart pine flooring.
• Newel posts, balusters and stair parts.
• Original hardware — hinges, knobs, escutcheons, latches.
• Light fixtures, including gas-to-electric conversions.
• Cast iron radiators, which have both salvage and scrap value.
• Stained and leaded glass.

Some of it has real money in it, some of it will keep a neighbour's restoration going, and all of it is lighter in a salvage van than in a container you are paying for by the ton.

Sizing an older-house job

A pre-demolition checklist

• Confirm what review applies if the work affects the outside
• Test for asbestos — tile, lagging, boiler insulation, siding, textured ceilings
• Consider lead paint precautions on anything pre-1980
• Pull the building and demolition permits
• Call 811 before any excavation
• Salvage first — doors, trim, mantels, hardware, flooring, radiators
• Separate the cast iron for scrap; it has real value
• Tell us if it is plaster — it changes the container immediately
• Plan on swaps rather than a bigger box for heavy material
• Keep concrete, limestone and mortar in their own small container