Wareham’s old Town Hall, also known as the home of community cable station WCTV, will be getting a new coat of paint.

Workers from W.J. Skouras and Co. Inc. of Peabody began work on the Main Street building last week.

Prominently situated across from Center Park, the old Town Hall has needed exterior repair for years. The building’s age and location in the town’s Historic District delayed work as plans needed to reviewed by various boards and commissions.

An initial plan for the WCTV staff and volunteers to do the work themselves was rejected.

“I’m not happy we’re spending tax dollars to do it when we offered to it ourselves at no costs to the taxpayers, but other than that, I’m happy,” said WCTV Executive Director Jay Heard.

Heard said he believed the initial plans were to paint the building plain white. After a trip to the library, though, Heard found a photo of the building dating back 1903 when the hall was constructed. The photo featured a green trim.

Heard passed the photo along to the workers, who now have to get the green trim approved.

The initial challenge, though, was to get the lead paint off of the building.

“We used the HEPA system to go over it,” contractor Tony Rosario explained. “We used the sanders with the HEPA shields that are hooked up to HEPA approved vacuums with filtering systems that are dust-free.”

To fully scrape off the old paint, the work becomes a bit more manual.

“Basically, you hand scrape everything: all the loose stuff, all the big stuff,” Rosario said.

Rosario said jobs such as this take about one week to complete. Issues with the wood siding, mostly caused by moisture, will cause this one to take longer.

This week, however, Heard was cheering the fact that the job is getting done at all.

“So finally, they are doing it and it’s terrific,” he said. “I think they are finding it’s going to be a big project -- with the rotted wood, lead paint, and things we had told them about, but what do we know? We’re only a TV station.”