Whether you are trying to remodel a room in your home yourself, or you are hiring help in stages, it is important to know the proper steps to take before beginning the remodel. First you will need to evaluate how much work the room needs – does the ceiling need work? Are you repainting the room? Do the floors need to be replaced? If the answer is yes to all three, we recommend starting at the top and working your way down. It may not be detrimental if you choose a different order, however top-down seems to be the most practical.
When working on the ceiling, there will be a mess; sure you can put tarps down, and use painters tape, and any other tricks and tips you may have found online, but if you ask us, it’s better to be safe than sorry. For that reason, starting with the ceiling is your best bet – any mess that is made won’t matter because everything else is being fixed up after.
Once the ceiling is complete it’s time to move to the walls and the floor. Different people will tell you different things for the order that is best – a painter is going to tell you they should be the last step, and the flooring guy will tell you he should be the last step. If you take a step back and think about it, there is one way that seems to be more practical, and yes, it follows our top-down approach. After finishing the ceiling, we recommend working on the walls, and then the floor.
We recommend working on the walls second because when you are painting the walls (similar to the ceiling) there will be spills. You can try to cover up the floors as much as possible, but it is not guaranteed that paint won’t spill/drip on the floor. If your floor is redone first…you will never forgive yourself for that blue paint blob staring at you every time you enter the room.
Finally, you’re ready to redo the floors. While it is true that this can be a messy process – it isn’t hard clean-up. When removing flooring it is common for a film of dust to be left around the room. A quick sweep and dusting will clean it right up. It takes a while for the floor finish to fully cure – during which time it is best for the floor to have as little traffic on it as possible. Once the floor is fully cured, you can go back through the room and check the baseboards – occasionally paint gets chipped on them while replacing the floor. This is a quick fix. You won’t need much paint to touch-up those few (if any) spots. It is much easier to touch up baseboard paint than a floor finish.