A board treasurer called me out to a mid-rise last spring with a reserve fund study open on the table. Painting was in it — one line, one number, one year, a decade out. She wanted to know if the number was right. It wasn’t, and not because the study was sloppy. It’s that “painting” isn’t one thing on one clock, and treating it as a single future lump is exactly how a board ends up voting on a special assessment it never saw coming. This post is for condo boards and property managers planning capital work — here’s how I’d read that line before you trust it.
1. “Painting” isn’t one line item — it’s four or five different clocks
When a reserve study lists painting as a single entry, it hides the fact that a building has several coating systems, and they all age on different schedules. Exterior wall and trim coatings might run 8 to 12 years. Balcony railings and metal, exposed to freeze-thaw and road salt, often need attention at 5 to 7. Common-area corridors and lobbies wear on foot traffic, not weather, so they turn over on their own cycle. Parking garage and specialty coatings are a different animal again.
Roll all of that into one number and one year, and you get a figure that’s wrong in both directions — too high if you assume everything fails at once, too low if you forget the railings that were quietly rusting five years before the walls needed anything.
What to look at: Ask whether your reserve study breaks painting into separate components by system and location, or lumps it. If it’s one line, that line is a placeholder, not a plan.
2. The study’s number is an allowance, not a quote
Reserve fund studies are built on per-unit or per-square-foot allowances — reasonable averages a planner applies across many buildings. What they can’t see is your building. Access is the biggest swing: a facade you can reach from the ground costs a fraction of one that needs swing stages or a boom lift, and two buildings with identical square footage can differ by a wide margin on access alone. Condition is the other swing — a coating caught on time needs washing and a topcoat; one deferred past failure needs scraping, priming, and substrate repair first.
I’ve walked buildings where the real scope came in under the reserve allowance, and others where it came in over because nobody had budgeted for the prep the walls actually needed. The allowance gets you a planning number — it should never be the number you approve against.
What to look at: In the year before a coating cycle comes due, get a real site assessment and written scope — not to spend early, but so the board is approving against a number that reflects your building, not an average.
3. The cheapest year to paint is usually before the study says it’s “due”
Coatings protect the thing underneath them. Once a coating is past its service life, it stops doing that job — and the cost stops being about paint. Exterior film that’s chalked and cracked lets water into the substrate. Railings that lose their coating start pitting, and pitted steel needs grinding or replacement, not a recoat. Every year a board defers past the failure point, the prep bill climbs and a paint project quietly turns into a repair project.
Ottawa adds a season constraint on top. Exterior coatings want dry surfaces and temperatures that hold overnight — realistically late spring through early fall here. Miss that window and you’re not deferring by weeks, you’re deferring to next year while the substrate keeps aging.
What to look at: If a coating is at or past the end of its cycle, treat the repaint as time-sensitive, not flexible. The reserve study’s “due” year is often the latest sensible year, not the cheapest one.
4. Phase it so you never need a special assessment
The special assessments I see almost always come from timing, not from a building being underfunded. Everything lands in the same budget year because it was all planned as one line. The fix is to stagger the systems across years the way they actually age — railings in one cycle, exterior walls in another, corridors on their own foot-traffic schedule — and to line each one up with the season and with the reserve contributions that fund it.
Phasing also lets you bundle intelligently. If the swing stages are already up for the exterior walls, that’s the year to do the balcony soffits and railings on the same access. Sequencing the work is where a board turns a scary lump sum into a series of planned, funded projects.
What to look at: Map your painting components onto a multi-year calendar against your reserve contributions. If two big systems collide in the same year, look at whether one can move a season without pushing a coating past failure.
What to do if you’re planning a repaint
If your reserve study has painting as one line, or you’re within a year or two of a coating cycle coming due, get a real set of eyes on the building: separate the systems, get a written scope for whatever’s closest to due, and put the rest on a phased calendar tied to the season and the reserve fund. Most budget surprises I see are preventable — they’re about planning, not paint.
I assess and quote condominium and multifamily painting across Ottawa — Kanata, Nepean, Barrhaven, Orleans, Stittsville, and the surrounding area — and I’m happy to walk a building with a board or property manager and give you an honest read before anything goes to a vote. Call or text 613.325.3011, or email yasir@heims.ca.
— Yasir, HEIMS Construction
HEIMS Construction is an Ottawa-based commercial and condominium painting contractor serving Ottawa and the surrounding communities. We work with condominium corporations, property managers, and building owners on exterior and interior repainting, railings and balconies, common areas, and the surface prep that makes coatings last. Licensed and insured, founded 2017.