A painting crew will move and cover furniture themselves — that is part of the job. But there is a set of things only you can do, and doing them the evening before means the work starts when it is supposed to.
Take down anything on the walls
Pictures, mirrors, shelves, curtain rods, wall clocks, TV brackets if the TV is coming down. Leave the fixings in the wall unless you want them gone — a painter will fill and sand the holes, but only if they know you are not putting the same picture back on the same hook.
Tell them which holes you want filled and which you want left. It is much easier to say this before the filler is mixed.
Clear the small and the breakable
Anything on a windowsill, mantelpiece, dresser or bookshelf. Ornaments, plants, lamps, chargers, photographs. Crews move furniture; they should not be the ones deciding which of your things are fragile.
Empty the closet if the closet is being painted. This is the single most common reason a room is not ready.
Strip the beds and take the curtains down
Bedding, cushions and curtains hold dust for weeks afterwards, and dust is unavoidable if there is any sanding. It is far easier to wash them once beforehand than to get sanding dust out of them afterwards.
Leave the heavy furniture
Beds, wardrobes, sofas, dining tables — leave them. They get moved to the middle of the room and covered. Trying to shift a wardrobe yourself the night before is how people hurt their backs and scratch their floors.
If something is genuinely too heavy, too valuable, or too fragile to move — a piano, a large aquarium, an antique — say so before the day.
Point out the problems
Walk the room and say out loud what you already know about it:
- A damp patch, and whether the cause was fixed
- A crack that keeps coming back
- A wall that sounds hollow
- Trim that has been painted so many times the doors stick
- Any surface you know was previously done in oil-based paint
None of this is a complaint. All of it changes what the crew brings on the first day.
Sort out access and parking
Where the van goes, which door they use, whether there is a code or a key, and what time they can start without waking anyone. In a condo, book the service elevator and check the building’s working hours in advance — that is a booking, not a phone call on the morning.
Say where the pets and children will be
Wet paint, open tins, ladders and trailing dust sheets are not a good mix with either. Doors will be propped open. Nobody wants to be the person who let the cat out.
Plan the room you are not using
Rooms usually cannot be slept in the night they are painted, particularly ceilings. Low-odour paints have made this much less of a problem than it used to be, but plan for it rather than discovering it at ten o’clock.
The evening before, in one list
Walls clear, surfaces clear, closets empty, curtains down, beds stripped, path to the room clear, parking sorted, pets arranged, and a list of the things you want to point out. That is about an hour of work, and it buys you a crew that starts painting instead of tidying.