A condo board showed me their new corridor carpet, two weeks old and already spotted with paint — the renovation had been booked in the wrong order
A board member walked me down a corridor last fall that had just been renovated: new carpet, new lights, new paint, new suite numbers. It should have looked finished. Instead there were paint drips on the new carpet, scuffs along every baseboard, and pale rings on the ceiling around the new light fixtures. Every trade had done its own part well. They had just gone in the wrong order. This post covers where painting belongs in a corridor renovation, so the work gets done once. For condo boards and property managers planning a corridor refresh, not homeowners.
1. Paint the walls and ceilings while the old carpet is still down
The old carpet is the best drop sheet you will ever have. If it is going in the dumpster anyway, the painters can work faster over it, and any drip lands on something that is being thrown out. Once the new carpet is down, every ladder and every pail has to be worked around it under full protection, and the crew slows down.
The board I walked with had done it the other way: carpet first, because the carpet supplier had a date open. The painters covered the new carpet, but a long corridor is hard to protect perfectly, and a few drips got through on every floor. Some came out. Some did not.
What to look at: If carpet and paint are both in the plan, put the ceilings and walls first in the schedule, and give the carpet supplier the date they can start, not the other way around.
2. Leave the last coat on the baseboards for after the carpet
There is one exception to painting first. Carpet installers work right against the baseboard. Their stretchers and knee kickers scuff it, and trimming the carpet edge nicks the paint. New carpet on a different underpad can also sit higher or lower than the old one, which leaves a thin band of bare or old paint showing along the bottom.
So I schedule the baseboards and the bottom of the door frames in two visits: prep and a first coat with the walls, and the final coat after the carpet is in. It is a short return visit, and it is the difference between a corridor that looks finished and one that looks almost finished.
What to look at: Check that your painting scope or quote includes a return visit for baseboards and frames after the flooring is installed. If it does not, it turns into a change order or a deficiency.
3. The electrician goes before the painter, not after
New LED fixtures rarely have the same footprint as the ones they replace. A smaller fixture leaves a ring of old, unpainted ceiling around it. A new layout means new holes in the ceiling and old ones to patch. If the ceiling is painted first, each of those becomes a touch-up on a fresh ceiling, and touch-ups on a flat ceiling under bright light almost always show.
The order that works: the electrician moves and adds the boxes, the holes are patched and primed, the ceiling is painted, then the new fixtures go up. It also means the wall colour gets judged under the new lights before anyone signs off, which matters more than most boards expect.
What to look at: Ask whether the new fixtures will sit in the same places and cover the same area as the old ones. If not, the ceiling patching belongs in the electrician’s or the painter’s scope, in writing.
4. Decide on the new signs before the walls are painted
Suite numbers, directional signs, fire extinguisher cabinets, corner guards, artwork: anything screwed to the wall has to come off for painting and go back up after. If the new signs are smaller than the old ones, or mounted in a different spot, the old screw holes and the outline of the old sign show on the fresh wall.
When the new signage is picked before the painting starts, the old holes get filled and the new positions can be marked. The same goes for suite doors: if the doors and frames are being painted too, that is its own sequence, which I wrote about in painting doors and trim in occupied corridors.
What to look at: Get the final signage order, with sizes and mounting heights, approved before the first floor is painted.
5. One schedule, one floor at a time
The order that works for most corridor renovations I see: electrical changes, then drywall patching, then ceilings and walls, then doors and frames, then flooring, then the final coat on the baseboards, then signs and fixtures, then the walkthrough. Floor by floor, so each trade follows the one before it up the building and residents only lose one floor at a time.
Somebody has to own that schedule. On a smaller job it is often the property manager. On a bigger one it is worth paying a general contractor or the lead trade to coordinate. Either way, the deficiency walkthrough should happen once per floor, at the end, with every trade’s work done.
What to look at: Ask each contractor for their dates floor by floor, and lay them out on one page. If two trades are booked on the same floor the same week, sort it out now.
What to do if you’re seeing any of this
If your board is planning a corridor renovation, the painting dates are easiest to set before the carpet and lighting contracts are signed. I work with condominium corporations and property managers across Ottawa — Kanata, Nepean, Barrhaven, Orleans, Stittsville and Westboro — to plan the painting and drywall side of corridor renovations and fit it around the other trades, one floor at a time. Call 613.325.3011 or email yasir@heims.ca.
— Yasir, HEIMS Construction
HEIMS Construction is an Ottawa-based commercial painting and drywall contractor serving condominium corporations, property managers and institutional clients across the Ottawa area. Fully licensed and insured, with $5M commercial general liability coverage.