Dissent Among the Troops

My dad called me this morning to inform me that there was dissent amoung the Cokeville crew about the order of finishing things up. Namely, why on earth we would lay the hard flooring before painting!? That is absurd!? Well, this will be THIRD time explaining the reasoning to my mom, but since of most of you are first timers, I'll explain myself once again.

When we built our house last falll, our house was built by Visionary Homes in a mere 60 days, from foundation to finish....without a single hitch...it was amazing! And since Visionary Homes builds hundreds of houses each year, I figure there is probably a good reason they do things the way they do. And after seeing their process first-hand, it makes perfect sense to me. So after building last year and seeing the process, I see no reason to do it any other way. Especially since this house we're working on is literally new construction from here on out.  

Visionary Homes had us lay hard flooring after the sheetrock was up, but BEFORE painting or trim. You lay the hard floor and cover it with a heavy-duty butcher paper, leaving it completely protected. After the hard flooring is in they put up the trim, which is the obvious next step (hard floor first, trim second). Once the trim is completely caulked and finished, THEN they call in the painting crew. They paint the trim first (with a sprayer), then tape off and cover the trim with plastic and paint the walls (with a sprayer).

The 3 big advantages I see to copying a professional-painter's process is: 1-paint sprayers are much more efficient that brushes and rollers; 2- trim needs to be sprayed, not rolled, in order to get a professional-looking finish; and 3: you finish one job completely, then move on to the next. It's much more efficient than painting the walls, then painting the trim pieces individually with a roller (I don't care what mom thinks, that will take forever and the finish will be amateur), putting up the trim, then caulking and fixing the nail pops, then painting all the trim again AGAIN (aka touching up). It is possible and plausible to finish one job at a time. Efficiency is key.

Yes, taping trim off in order to paint the walls does take time, but it's not hard labor, or terribly expensive, and it will be worth it when we can finish the job in half the time by using a paint sprayer instead of rollers (and we should definitely rent a paint sprayer for a job this big). 

So, moral of the story is this...we can and we should lay the hard flooring this weekend, BEFORE painting. There is no reason not to. The hard flooring will be safe and protected beneath some thick butcher paper. We can drip paint all we want, with no harm done. And whether I can convince my mom to paint the trim and the walls at the same time with a paint sprayer or not, at least the flooring issue will be out of the way.

This weekend the sheetrockers will be finishing up the mudding/texturing, so we can't paint, we can't put up cabinets, we can't install light fixtures or doors...but we CAN install our laminate flooring (with a little coordination of working around our mudders this weekend). This is not a novel idea I cooked up in my head...I stole it from Visionary Homes, a leading construction company in Cache Valley. There is a reason they build hundreds of houses a year with very happy customers, and it's probably because they know what they're doing. I would love the mudders to be completely done before doing the flooring, but honestly, what's a little mud dripped on butcher paper? There will be absolutely no harm done in overlapping a bit.

So, Mom, have I convinced you yet with my THIRD explanation? Or is Visionary Homes crazy?