If you are part of a strata community, you have to work with your neighbours to accomplish a range of things including painting your building's hallways, common areas and exterior walls. Whether you are the president of the owner's association or just a resident interested in getting more involved, here are a few tips on preparing for and executing painting for your strata community:

1. Always maintain a savings account for painting and other infrequent maintenance needs

While you live in a strata community, all of the residents contribute money for the upkeep of the facility. These contributions cover the cost of regular maintenance tasks such as lawn care, but the group that manages your strata also needs to remember to set aside cash for infrequent tasks such as roof repairs or repainting.

2. Plan the decision-making process ahead of time

Ideally, you should outline the decision making process regarding painting when you write the original agreement for the members of your strata community. However, if you did not do that, you can outline a plan now. Ideally, you should have the decision-making process outlined before you have to tackle the task of repainting your facility.

Your plan should identify who picks out the colour of paint. Do you want to assign that task to a small managing group, or do you want to have a meeting with all of the residents and require that at least 75 percent of them agree on the colour?

Deciding, in advance, how the decision making process should go can help to make the process easier, and it can help to prevent disagreements.

3. Identify someone to hire painters and gather quotes

In addition to making a plan regarding how you are going to choose colours and other features, you also need to identify someone to handle hiring the painters and gathering quotes. If you don't have a full time staff person working with your strata management group, you will need to hire someone or find a resident to volunteer for this role.

4. Choose a company who specialises in body corporate painting

When you finally get to the portion of the process where you get to hire your painters, look for painters who specialise in body corporate painting, such as Chris Hoole & Staff. These painters work primarily on large buildings or shared living spaces, and they do everything, from painting doors, to painting exteriors, to painting hallways, to painting individual units.

Their experience in painting shared living spaces means they know how to deal with the challenges present in these situations. For example, they can put up signs advising residents about when painting will happen, they can put up barriers to keep dogs or children away from the paint, and they can make plans to accommodate the constant foot traffic of a shared living space.

5. Keep some paint for touch-ups

Regardless of which body corporate painters you hire to paint your building, ask them to leave you a few extra cans of paint. Keep these extra cans in your building's storage or janitorial room so that when you need to touch up the paint you can.

 

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