Apartment Turnover Repaint Standard

Purpose

Produce the same unit every time, on a clock the property manager can schedule leases against, with a per-unit record that says what was found and what was done. A turn is production work: the spec is fixed by the property, and the money is made or lost on the units that did not match it. The failures this prevents are six units painted six slightly different ways because the standard lived in one manager's head, a crew scraping pre-1978 paint with no lead determination, and a unit released with a sprinkler head wearing overspray, which is a fire protection defect the painter created and the property inherits.

Scope

Vacant unit repaints for apartment and small multifamily properties on a turnover schedule: the written property spec, the per-unit exception process, access and utilities, life safety devices in the unit, prep and coating to spec, the dry-time gate before flooring and move-in, and the per-unit close.

It does not cover occupied unit work (see the occupied home daily start and close standard), RRP containment and cleaning verification, which governs in full wherever a pre-1978 determination triggers it, exterior building repaints, or common-area corridors and stairwells, which carry egress and fire-rating constraints this SOP does not address.

Roles and responsibilities

Procedure

1. Get the property spec in writing once, before the first unit. Have the property name product, sheen and color for walls, ceilings, trim and doors, the coat rule, the patch standard, and what is excluded. Acceptance: a signed one-page spec naming those items, including the coat rule stated as a condition rather than a preference, for example one coat where the existing wall is the same color and washes clean and two coats otherwise. Wrong, and the stop rule: no written spec means no first unit, because a spec that lives in a conversation produces a different unit each time and every dispute becomes the painter's word. Hazard: none, a document, and it is step 1 because every gate below is measured against it.

2. Make the lead determination for the building at contract, not at the unit door. Get the year of construction in writing from the owner, and where the property is pre-1978 target housing, apply the EPA Renovation, Repair and Painting rule at 40 CFR Part 745 Subpart E, which requires a certified firm, a certified renovator and its work practices once the disturbance exceeds the rule's minor maintenance thresholds. Acceptance: a written year of construction on file for the property, and where it is pre-1978, the RRP standard governing every unit rather than a per-unit judgment. Wrong, and the stop rule: an unknown or disputed year is treated as pre-1978 until documented otherwise, and a crew without a certified renovator does not start those units. Hazard: lead has more than one route and the occupant's is only half of it, so the tech scraping or sanding pre-1978 coatings works under a written respiratory program per 29 CFR 1910.134, does not eat, drink or use a phone in the unit, and washes before doing any of those.

3. Take the unit at a real handover, with keys, utilities and a photo set. Sign the unit's keys out against a list, confirm power and water are on at the unit, and photograph every room before anything is touched, including damage, holes and prior-tenant condition. Acceptance: keys signed out, a working outlet and a working tap confirmed in the unit, and a dated photo set covering every room and every surface in scope. Wrong, and the stop rule: a unit with no power or no water does not start, because there is no light to cut by, no cleanup and no ventilation, and the manager hears that morning rather than at day's end. Hazard: a vacant unit holds whatever the last tenant left, so the first walk is a survey for needles, broken glass, spoiled food and pest activity, and anything sharp or biological goes to the manager for removal rather than to the painting crew.

4. Walk the unit against the spec and send the exception list before a can opens. List everything that will not meet the spec at the spec's price: smoke or nicotine staining, pet odor, water stains needing a stain-blocking primer, holes larger than the patch standard, and any color change the unit needs. Acceptance: a written exception list per unit, sent and approved or declined by the manager before prep starts, with photos attached. Wrong, and the stop rule: absorbing exceptions quietly is how a turn loses money on exactly the units that took the most labor, so an unapproved exception stops that surface, not the unit. Hazard: heavy staining often means a sealer or a solvent-borne primer, which changes the ventilation and ignition picture, so a unit switching to those products picks up the solvent standard's controls before the product arrives.

5. Count and control the life safety devices, and never paint a sprinkler head. Inventory smoke and carbon monoxide alarms and any sprinkler heads and escutcheons, cover or remove alarms only for the operations that need it, and bag sprinklers rather than coating near them unprotected. Acceptance: a written device count per unit that matches at close, and zero coating on any sprinkler head, escutcheon or fusible element. Wrong, and the stop rule: a sprinkler head with paint on it is replaced by the property's fire protection contractor, not cleaned, wiped or scraped, per NFPA 25 in the edition your authority having jurisdiction has adopted, and the unit is not released until that replacement is done and recorded. Hazard: device plates come off only after the circuit is de-energized and proved dead with a meter proved on a known live source before and after, per NFPA 70E-2021, 120.5, with work practices at 29 CFR 1910.333(b)(2); if nobody on site is qualified under 29 CFR 1910.332, the plates stay on and get masked.

6. Prep and coat to the two things a turn is actually judged on. Fill and sand patches flush, spot-prime every patch, then coat to the spec's coat rule with cut lines held to the property's tolerance. Acceptance: no patch visible under a work light held at a shallow angle to the wall, no roller shadow at the ceiling line, cut lines straight at ceiling, trim and plates. Wrong, and the stop rule: flashing at spot repairs is the most common turn rejection, and the fix is another coat over the primed patch rather than a heavier final coat, so a wall that flashes is recoated before the unit is offered. Hazard: compound and old coatings both put dust in the air of a closed unit, so sanding runs with a HEPA-filtered vacuum at the tool or a window fan set to exhaust, and pre-1978 units run under step 2's controls without exception.

7. Hold the dry-time gate before flooring, appliances and move-in. Take the touch, recoat and cure times off the product data sheet, and give the manager the earliest date each trade can follow. Acceptance: flooring, appliances and tape applied to painted surfaces no earlier than the data sheet's stated times, and a written release time per unit handed to the manager. Wrong, and the stop rule: a carpet crew working against fresh base scuffs it and the painter owns the callback, so a unit is not released early on a verbal promise, and if the schedule cannot hold the gate the manager chooses which slips. Hazard: a closed vacant unit holds vapor and slows cure at once, so units are ventilated during and after coating per the sheet, and the crew does not seal a unit up behind them with solvent-borne product still wet.

8. Close the unit against its own record. Reinstall and test every alarm on the step 5 count, re-hang plates, clean floors, walk the unit against the spec and the exception list, return keys, file the photo set. Acceptance: device count restored equal to count removed with every alarm passing its own test button, keys returned the same day, and a per-unit close sheet naming the spec, the exceptions and the release time. Wrong, and the stop rule: an alarm that does not test or a device that does not work stops the unit's release and goes to the manager that day rather than into the next tenant's first week. Hazard: this is the step that puts energy and life safety back, so circuits opened at step 5 are closed by the person who opened them, standing to the hinge side of the panel door, and every alarm is confirmed by its test button rather than by its light.

The record this produces

Per property: the signed spec, the year-of-construction determination, the key list. Per unit: the pre-work photo set, the exception list with the manager's approval or refusal, the device count out and back, the products used, the release time, and the close sheet. The manager reads release times when scheduling the next trade, and the exception lists are what make a per-unit price defensible at renewal, because they show which units cost what and why.

One run of this procedure, filled in

Six vacant units on an 18 unit property, crew of three, five working days scheduled, which is 6 units over 5 days, or 1.2 units per day. Units 104, 108, 202, 206, 210 and 214. Step 1: spec signed, one coat where the wall is the same color and washes clean, two coats otherwise, trim in a semi-gloss waterborne enamel, ceilings flat white. Step 2: the owner's written year of construction is 1986, so RRP does not apply and that determination sits at the property level rather than being re-argued at each door.

Step 3: keys signed out for all six, power and water confirmed on in five. Unit 210 had no power at the panel, so under the step 3 stop rule it was not started; the manager had it restored the next morning and 210 moved to day two. Step 4: exception lists sent on all six before any can opened. Unit 202 needed a stain-blocking primer on a ceiling water stain, unit 214 needed two coats throughout on a color change, both approved by the manager the same morning; the remaining four ran at spec.

Step 5 fails in unit 206. The count logged two smoke alarms and one carbon monoxide alarm, plus one concealed sprinkler head in the hall closet recorded separately. At the close walk the escutcheon and the head behind it carried visible overspray from the closet ceiling. The stop rule fired as written: nothing was cleaned or scraped, the head was replaced by the property's fire protection contractor under NFPA 25 in the adopted edition, and 206 was not released until that was recorded. It released one working day late, and the correction for the rest of the batch was to bag closet heads before the ceiling was cut in rather than after.

Step 6: one wall in unit 108 flashed at three patches under the work light and took a second coat over the primed patches rather than a heavier finish coat. Step 7: release times issued off the enamel's data sheet, flooring scheduled to the later date. Step 8: the three alarms in 206 restored three for three and tested by button, the replaced head logged against its own line, keys returned the same day on all six.

References

• 40 CFR Part 745 Subpart E, the EPA Renovation, Repair and Painting rule, which applies to pre-1978 target housing and reaches the firm, the certified renovator and the work practices.
• NFPA 25, in the edition your authority having jurisdiction has adopted, which binds the property and reaches you through the permit and the property's own inspection program, for painted sprinklers requiring replacement rather than cleaning.
• 29 CFR 1910.333(b)(2) with NFPA 70E-2021, 120.5, for de-energizing and proving dead before device plates come off, and 29 CFR 1910.134 for respiratory protection under a written program.
• Coating product data sheets for coat rules, recoat and cure times and the release times handed to the property.
• See related: the RRP containment and cleaning verification standard, the occupied home daily start and close standard, the solvent and rag storage and fire control standard.