Apartments and units
Apartment and unit painting
We paint apartments and units, working around lift bookings, building access hours, neighbours and the space available for furniture.
Building access and working hours
Most blocks have rules, and they're the first thing we ask about. Booking the lift and getting it padded. Which entrance tradespeople use. What hours work is allowed, which in a lot of buildings means nothing noisy before eight or after five, and nothing at all on a Sunday. Whether the owners corporation wants anything on file before someone turns up with a ladder.
Tell us the building manager's name and number at the quote and we'll deal with them directly. We can confirm access arrangements with them before the start date, at no extra charge.
Painting an occupied apartment
Limited space for furniture affects how we plan an apartment repaint.
So we work one room at a time and stack into the room we've finished rather than trying to clear the whole place at once. You keep a bedroom to sleep in every night of the job. Working in stages takes longer but helps keep the apartment usable.
What's different about a flat
Balconies. Anything sprayed on a balcony travels, and below you is someone's washing, someone's outdoor setting and usually a car park. Balcony work is brush and roller, or it's fully sheeted, and we'll tell you which before we quote.
Shared walls. Sanding carries straight through a party wall. Your neighbour hears it like it's in their lounge room. We keep the noisy work to the middle of the day and tell you when it's happening so you can give them a heads-up.
Ventilation. A lot of flats have one openable window per room and a bathroom with no window at all. So we lean on low-odour water-based paints, and we leave longer between coats to let each one dry properly.
Older concrete and plaster. Walk-up blocks from the sixties and seventies often have hard-set plaster over concrete, which doesn't patch like modern plasterboard and needs the right filler. Getting that wrong is why patches flash through a fresh coat.
Common property approvals
Inside your front door is yours. The corridor, the foyer, the stairwell and usually the balcony ceiling are common property, and they're the owners corporation's to authorise, not yours. If you want work done out there, it needs to go through the committee or the manager first.
We discuss which areas need approval before including them in the work.
What affects the price
- What floor you're on and whether there's lift access, because carrying gear up four flights is real time
- How restricted the working hours are. A block that allows 8 to 5 costs less than one that allows 10 to 3
- Whether we can run a few rooms at once or strictly one at a time
- Ceiling height, especially in a converted warehouse
- Balcony work, and how much sheeting it needs
If it's a rental going between tenants, the property managers page covers how we run those to a date. General interior detail is on the interior painting page.
Preparation and aftercare
Read our painting preparation and aftercare guide for arranging access, protecting belongings and checking when the painted surface is ready to use or clean.
Want a price on your apartment?
Tell us the suburb, the floor, and what the building allows. Get a free written quote and an agreed start date.
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