A crew turning up at seven in the morning to find a house that is ready will start painting by nine. A crew turning up to find wardrobes full, pictures on the walls, a dog that bolts, and a car in the driveway will spend the first half-day moving your belongings instead. You pay for that time either way.
None of this is difficult. It is just easier to do calmly over a fortnight than frantically on a Sunday night. Here is the sequence that actually works, and the short list of things you should leave well alone.
Two weeks out
The decisions, not the lifting.
- Sign off colours in writing, including which colour goes on which surface, and the sheen level for each
- Look at your chosen colours on the actual walls at different times of day, not on a chip under a shop light
- Sort access: where the crew parks, whether your council requires a permit for the street, and whether a body corporate or owners corporation needs notice
- Plan for pets and anyone who works from home, because both need a decision rather than an improvisation
- Tell your neighbours if the work is external, especially if scaffolding or a lift is going up
The week before
Now the moving. For interiors, the aim is a room the crew can work around without touching anything of yours.
- Take everything off the walls: art, mirrors, shelving, wall-mounted televisions and their brackets
- Move small furniture out entirely, and leave larger pieces to be shifted to the centre and covered
- Empty built-in wardrobes if the insides are being painted, and clear the tops of them either way
- Clear benches, shelves and windowsills completely
- Lift rugs and roll them away from the work area
For exteriors, the job is clearing a working perimeter. Cut back shrubs and climbing plants from the walls, move pots, outdoor furniture and the barbecue away from the house, clear the side access so a trestle and ladder can actually pass, and unlock any gates that need to stay open. Have a look at the scale of access a full exterior needs across our Narre Warren project.
The night before and the morning of
- Take down curtains, blinds and their brackets if the frames or architraves are being painted
- Remove door hardware, hooks and switch covers only if your painter has asked you to; otherwise, leave them
- Put away anything valuable, fragile or sentimental, rather than trusting it to a drop sheet
- Strip beds in rooms being painted and take the linen out of the room entirely
- Move cars out of the driveway before the crew arrives, not after
- Leave keys, alarm codes and the wifi password sorted with one nominated contact
What to leave alone
Helpful homeowners create more problems than unhelpful ones. Three in particular.
Do not sand, scrape or strip anything yourself. On any home built or last painted before about 1970, this risks releasing lead dust through the house, and it is why lead paint removal is a contained process rather than a weekend task. Even in a newer home, amateur sanding usually creates a surface the painter has to fix before they can start.
Do not fill holes with whatever is in the shed. The wrong filler shrinks, flashes through the topcoat or refuses to take paint evenly, and it all has to come out again. Leave patching to the crew.
Do not buy the paint yourself to save money. If the painter did not specify it, the painter cannot warrant the finish, and you have quietly transferred responsibility for the result from them to you.
Living in it while it happens
Most interior repaints are perfectly liveable if you stage them. Ask for the work to move room by room so you always have somewhere intact to sleep, and get the bedrooms done early in the week rather than last.
Modern water-based interior paints are low odour rather than no odour. Ventilation matters more than the product does, so open windows through the day and keep them open for a few hours after the crew leaves. If someone in the house is sensitive to smells, sleep somewhere else for the first night after a bedroom is coated rather than powering through it.
Working from home is usually fine with a bit of planning. Nominate one room as the office, have it painted first or last, and expect a day or two of noise from sanding and compressors. Pets need a firmer plan. Doors and gates stand open for hours on an exterior job, which is how cats and dogs get out.
After the crew leaves
Paint is touch dry long before it is cured. A wall that feels dry the same afternoon can still be hardening for a couple of weeks, which is why picture hooks, heavy cleaning and pushing furniture hard against fresh walls are all worth delaying.
Give it a week before you rehang anything heavy, leave a gap behind furniture for a few days so the film is not compressed, and if you need to clean a mark early on, use a barely damp cloth rather than a scourer or spray cleaner. You can see how well a properly cured interior holds up across our residential interior portfolio, and if you are wondering how long you should get out of the job, our guide on how often to repaint an interior covers that.
Frequently asked questions
Do we have to move out while the interior is painted?
Rarely. Staging the work room by room keeps a house liveable for most families, and the usual exception is a large open plan area where there is nowhere to retreat to. Extended stripping work on an older home is the other case worth discussing in advance, since that is more disruptive than ordinary repainting.
Can we just push the furniture into the middle of the room?
For big pieces, yes, and the crew will usually do that and cover them. Small items are different. Lamps, books, side tables and anything on open shelving should go out of the room entirely, because a covered pile in the centre still has to be worked around and uncovered to cut in behind.
Should we wash the walls before they arrive?
No. Surface cleaning is part of the preparation you are paying for, and it needs to be done with the right product and properly rinsed. Household cleaners can leave a residue that stops paint from adhering, so an enthusiastic scrub the day before can genuinely make the job worse.
Will the smell be a problem for a baby or someone with asthma?
Low-odour, water-based products and steady ventilation handle most situations, but it is not a question to answer with a blog post. Tell your painter before the job so the product and the sequence can be chosen around it, and speak to your GP if there is a specific medical concern rather than guessing.
How soon can we hang pictures back up?
Wait about a week for anything heavy, and longer in cold or humid weather when curing slows. Hanging early tends to leave a mark in the film that never quite settles, which is a frustrating way to spoil a job you have just paid for.
Talk through the run sheet before the first drop cloth goes down
Almost every painting job that goes badly for a household goes badly in the first two hours, because nobody agreed who was moving what. Ten minutes on the phone beforehand fixes it.
Meggyco Painting Pty Ltd walks through access, sequencing, pets, parking and what you need to clear before the start date rather than on it, and carries $10 million in public liability cover for the things that are genuinely ours to worry about. Call (045) 071 2009 or get in touch through meggycopainting.com.au, and we will map out how your week will actually run.
