Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Painting Ourselves to Save Money: good idea or bad idea

[Liz (liz]

I have lead the painting crew for Habitat for Humanity on a couple of  
builds.
(Not because I'm a good painter, I'm a skill-less person who is  
pretty organized....)

In my experience it takes a full day for inexperienced painters in  
crews of 6-8 to paint a 3BR house. We also ALWAYS use at least 2  
gallons more paint than is allocated for the home. We generally do 2  
coats, although I'm pretty sure that we don't actually cover it all  
twice. (I can't remember, but it seems a second coat would have to be  
a second day.) Second coats go MUCH faster, the smooth surface is  
easier to paint. Also, on at least one occasion high humidity slowed  
the process because the paint didn't dry.

Ceilings were professionally sprayed.

To ease the process, painting is done before all the trim is put in  
place, and, when possible, someone is out on the porch doing the trim  
at the same time. Not the best look (the nails are then not covered),  
but not so bad either. Window cleaning always turns out to be a hard  
job (because unskilled labor spatters paint), and in one house we had  
to clean the linoleum which was down already and we had spilled a  
tray of paint.

At Mosaic we have discussed the possibility of spray painting one  
coat, one color, ceilings and floors.
Then households who care can take care of painting, or hiring out,  
the second coat.

-Liz
Mosaic Commons
Berlin, MA
liz [at] significant.com
508-450-0431



On Oct 25, 2006, at 3:34 PM, Sharon Villines wrote:

> In my person point of view, people are up for tasks for a limited
> period of time. For a new group that had not done much work for the
> community yet (big "yet"), there may be more energy. You need to make
> decisions about where you want to use that energy.
>
> But if a tasks takes several Saturdays, several weekends, etc., unless
> they just love to paint, people will lose interest very quickly.
>
> And there is the problem of incurring construction costs if it isn't
> done on schedule so the other work can proceed. "Volunteering" under
> the gun is not fun. Have a back up plan.
>
> Sharon
> -----
> Sharon Villines
> Takoma Village Cohousing, Washington DC
> http://www.takomavillage.org
>
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