A board asked me to price a corridor repaint — half the suite doors had already been repainted by owners, in six different colours
A property manager walked me through a mid-rise last fall to price a corridor repaint. Every few doors, the colour changed. Owners had been repainting their own suite doors for years: a navy here, a sage green there, one in high-gloss black. Out on the balconies it was the same story with the walls and railings. None of it was malicious, and none of it was in the building’s spec. This post covers why owner painting causes problems for the whole building, and how a board can set simple rules that owners will actually follow. For condo boards and property managers, not homeowners.
1. Most of what owners paint isn’t theirs
In most Ottawa condos, the outside face of a suite door, the balcony walls and ceiling, the railings and the exterior trim are common elements, or exclusive-use common elements at most. The owner gets to use them. The corporation owns them and is responsible for maintaining them. Your declaration is the document that says exactly where the line falls.
That matters for painting. When an owner repaints a door face or a balcony wall, they’re changing something the corporation will have to maintain, repaint and pay for later. Most owners don’t know that. They see their door and their balcony.
What to look at: Pull out your declaration and check which painted surfaces are common elements. If you’re not sure how it reads, ask your condo lawyer before you write any rule.
2. Mismatched paint costs the corporation money later
The colour is the obvious problem. The bigger one is what’s underneath. Owners often use whatever’s on sale: interior wall paint on an exterior balcony wall, a flat finish on a door that gets hit every day, or latex straight over the original oil enamel. That paint peels, chalks or stays tacky, and on the next repaint cycle every one of those doors and walls needs extra prep before it can take the building’s spec.
On the building I mentioned, a good share of the doors needed stripping or a bonding primer that the rest didn’t. Across a whole building that’s a real line on the quote, and it comes out of the reserve fund. A dark colour also takes an extra coat or two to cover with the building’s lighter standard.
What to look at: Walk one floor and count the doors and balconies that don’t match the building’s colour or sheen. Multiply by the number of floors to get a rough idea of the extra prep on the next cycle.
3. Write down the building standard first
You can’t ask owners to match a standard that only exists in a former manager’s memory. Before any rule, the corporation needs a written colour and product schedule: the colour name and code, the sheen and the product line for doors, door frames, balcony walls, balcony ceilings and railings. I wrote about how to build that schedule in building colour specification.
Once it exists, keep it in the maintenance file and give a copy to the superintendent. It’s the same document a painter needs for touch-ups, so it pays for itself the first time someone dings a door.
What to look at: Ask your property manager for the current colour schedule. If nobody can produce one, getting it written is the first job.
4. Make the rule simple: ask first, and use the spec
The rules that work are short. An owner who wants to touch up or repaint a common-element surface asks management first, and uses the building’s colour, sheen and product. No custom colours on door faces, balconies or railings. Changes to the inside face of a suite door are usually the owner’s business, and saying so in the rule heads off a lot of arguments.
Rules generally have to go through a notice process to owners before they take effect, so this isn’t something to announce in a lobby memo. Your condo lawyer can tell you the steps for your building.
What to look at: Draft a one-page rule that names the surfaces, points to the colour schedule, and says who to call before picking up a brush.
5. Bring the outliers back on the next repaint
There’s no need to make owners repaint their doors this month. The practical fix is to fold the non-matching doors and balconies into the next corridor or exterior repaint, price the extra prep once, and let the new rule keep things uniform from then on. Owners who want touch-ups between cycles can get a small can of the building colour from the superintendent, which also helps keep touch-ups matching.
What to look at: When you request repaint quotes, list the non-matching doors and balconies separately so you can see what the extra prep actually costs.
What to do if you’re seeing any of this
If your corridors or balconies have drifted into a patchwork, I can walk the building, count what doesn’t match, tell you what prep each surface needs, and help you put together the colour schedule a rule can point to. I work with condominium corporations and property managers across Ottawa — Kanata, Nepean, Barrhaven, Orleans, Stittsville and Westboro — on corridor and exterior repaints. 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.