When Painting Our Old House Went Wrong

We started painting in autumn

The painting started in autumn, which initially seemed reasonable.

The problem was that the job dragged on.

I found the painter quite difficult to keep on track and, as autumn turned into winter, the conditions became less and less helpful.

Cold and wet weather made drying more difficult and a job that should have been relatively straightforward started affecting the timing of everything else.

Because we were still renting nearby and waiting to move into the house, the delays weren't happening in isolation.

They affected our expectations about when we could actually move in.

That was probably one of my first big lessons about renovation planning.

A delay in one trade can quickly become a delay in something completely different.

The paint bubbled

Unfortunately, finishing the painting wasn't quite the end of it.

We later had problems with the paint bubbling and had to get the painter back to rectify it.

That experience taught me something I would pay much more attention to now.

It isn't enough to find someone who knows how to paint.

You also want to know that they understand the particular material and surface they're working with.

Finding the right expertise made a much bigger difference when we were plastering over our old horsehair walls.

This was a very old house with old materials and surfaces.

Preparation matters, the condition of the existing surface matters and the person doing the work needs to understand what they're dealing with.

If I was doing it again, I'd ask more questions at the beginning about the surface preparation, the materials being painted and whether the trade had worked with that type of surface before.

Hiring a trade doesn't always mean the job is off your plate

This was another lesson I learned fairly quickly.

Sometimes you find a great trade, hand over the job and everything runs beautifully.

Sometimes you don't.

With the painting, I spent much more time following up and trying to keep the work moving than I'd expected.

Then, when there was a problem with the finished work, I also had to organise for the painter to come back and rectify it.

Hiring someone to do a job doesn't necessarily mean you've handed the whole problem over.

Someone still needs to keep track of progress, notice when things are slipping and deal with problems when they come up.

Timing matters more than I realised

If I was planning the same renovation again, I would think much more carefully about when exterior work was scheduled and what would happen if it ran late.

Starting in autumn wasn't necessarily the problem.

The problem was having so little room in the schedule that delays pushed the work into much less favourable winter conditions.

I'd also be more conservative about setting a move in date around a best case renovation schedule.

Things go wrong.

Trades run late.

Work needs to be redone.

Weather doesn't cooperate.

Having some breathing room in the plan makes all of that much easier to deal with.

The bigger lesson was planning the whole renovation

Painting was only one part of what we were trying to coordinate.

At the same time, we were making decisions about where to spend money, what needed doing immediately and what could stay as it was.

In our bathroom, for example, we deliberately kept the existing plumbing locations rather than moving everything around. It was a relatively simple decision that helped us keep the renovation costs under control.

Those decisions all form part of the same bigger picture.

It's not just about finding someone to paint a house or renovate a bathroom.

It's working out what needs to happen, what order it needs to happen in, what it will affect and what you'll do when the original plan changes.

Our painting project certainly wasn't my favourite part of the renovation.

But it taught me a lot about managing one.