Townhouse HOA Repainting with Tidel Remodeling
Neighborhoods don’t age all at once. A west-facing row of townhomes gets hammered by sun and wind, while a shaded courtyard hides damp corners where mildew lives rent-free. Then one day you look around and see the palette slipping out of sync — some doors brighter than others, fascia boards chalking, stucco hairline cracks catching shadows at noon. That’s usually when an HOA board calls, asking what it takes to repaint a community without turning daily life into a construction zone. I’ve managed repainting programs for properties with eight homes and for communities with 180. The patterns repeat: the best outcomes come from disciplined planning, clear communication, and paint systems matched to the substrate and climate. That’s the lane Tidel Remodeling stays in.
What makes HOA repainting different from a single-home project
Painting one house is a sprint. Painting a townhome community is chess. You’re not only freshening surfaces; you’re managing rules, expectations, and a sequence of work that touches shared walls, parking, and privacy. An HOA-approved exterior painting contractor has to wear more hats than a typical painter. They coordinate with property managers and boards, they document, they batch tasks to control cost, and they protect relationships among neighbors who share fences and sometimes even a single water shutoff.
A few realities shape the job. First, approvals and color standards matter. Communities invest time to define schemes that look good at scale and hold up across light conditions. Second, access is half the battle — ladders and lifts need staging plans, and soffits that sit over common walkways call for temporary barriers and daily cleanup. Third, schedule pressures are real. Residents are busy. If you miss windows of good weather or fail to sequence buildings, you end up chasing punch items for weeks. A townhouse exterior repainting company that understands all three tends to save the HOA money and headaches.
How Tidel Remodeling approaches color compliance
If your CC&Rs require specific body, trim, and accent colors, we treat those as a non-negotiable specification, not a suggestion. Community color compliance painting starts with documentation. We pull the governing documents, record existing approvals, gather old invoices or paint stickers from water heater closets, and confirm the paint line and sheen. When records are thin, we perform a field match using a spectrophotometer, then test panels on two exposures so the board can see morning and late-day color shifts before a single gallon is ordered.
A quick example: a planned development painting specialist job we handled in a coastal town had three approved schemes that looked nearly identical on paper. In direct sun, one read chalky and cool; under overcast it dropped flat against the landscaping. We set up side-by-side samples on a building edge that caught both exposures and invited board members to view at different times. The board ended up adjusting an accent color by a single step on the LRV scale to hold contrast across seasons. That tiny tweak preserved the neighborhood’s character and saved the HOA from a two-year stretch of “Why does my door look drab?” emails.
Color consistency for communities doesn’t stop at the formula. Sheen uniformity is often where projects go sideways. If the trim goes eggshell on one building and satin on the next, the difference jumps out at sunset. We document sheens in big letters on the building-specific work orders and pre-label the kits for each crew. It sounds fussy. It prevents rework.
Substrates, systems, and the right prep in shared environments
Townhomes often combine materials that age differently: fiber cement siding, stucco returns at garages, LP SmartSide on newer phases, older cedar fascia, aluminum gutters, and steel railings that collect salt and rust. Shared property painting services add a twist because the same component can run the length of a building and cross deed lines. Prep quality has to be consistent along the run or the eye will catch every splice.
For stucco, we pressure wash judiciously — enough pressure to remove chalk but not so much that we drive water into control joints or blow out friable corners. We follow with elastomeric patch at hairline cracks and masonry primer where chalking remains after washdown. On fiber cement, we check butt-joint flashings and use a high-build acrylic to bridge texture without telegraphing repairs. Wood fascia demands moisture checks. If readings spike above 16 percent, we pause. Paint over wet wood traps problems you can’t see for six months.
Rust at balcony railings or wrought iron gates needs containment. Residents often keep strollers or bikes tucked nearby, and we work with a property management painting solution that includes protective sheeting and daily vacuuming of chips. Two-coat rust conversion followed by a DTM acrylic or urethane gives you better long-term performance than spot priming alone. When in doubt, prime the whole rail.
Scheduling around real life
Coordinated exterior painting projects hinge on an honest calendar. We front-load drying days for high-sun elevations and reserve shoulder weeks for detail work, touch-up, and punch lists. In hot climates, we shift daily start times earlier and paint elevations as they slide into shade. In winter-prone regions, we lock in production windows after the last freeze risk and before leaf blowers turn every walkway into a debris field.
We’ve learned to write schedules in plain English. Building A: wash Monday, caulk Tuesday, paint Wednesday and Thursday, doors and trims Friday. We post those at each unit and send a weekly digest to the property manager. People don’t need a Gantt chart; they need to know when to move the SUV and whether the dog should stay inside until lunchtime.
One gated community painting contractor project spanned 14 buildings and an entrance monument with lighting. We sequenced in three-wave cycles: wash and prep, body color, trim and accents. That pattern let us reuse lift rentals efficiently and kept noise predictable. Residents told us the reliability felt as valuable as the fresh paint.
Working with boards and property managers
Boards juggle reserve studies, landscaping, and roof replacements, then add an exterior repaint. Our job is to reduce their load, not add to it. That starts with clear proposals and ends with a punch list that matches the expectations we set at the start. As a condo association painting expert partner, we meet the board on site, walk a representative building, and agree on scope boundaries: which fences, which gates, where the HOA’s responsibility ends and homeowner discretion begins.
A common friction point is door colors and hardware. If doors are owner-controlled but sit on a building the HOA paints, we identify those Roofing units and offer an opt-in price for doors in the approved palette. Many owners say yes when the ladder is already there and the painter is on the stoop. You get neighborhood repainting services that respect autonomy while preserving the look of the block.
Property managers appreciate clean documentation. Before we mobilize, they get a binder or shared drive with product data sheets, insurance certificates, the safety plan, and a building-by-building checklist. During the job, we send short updates: progress photos, any substrate surprises, and change-order candidates with costs and options. The combination keeps everyone off the back foot.
Safety and access in dense settings
Townhomes squeeze working space. Lifts navigate tight drives, and sidewalks become staging for ladders and drop cloths. We use high-visibility cones and temporary signage to reroute foot traffic and keep work zones clear. For upper floors over shared walkways, we plan access windows with residents so no one is stuck inside during a funeral-parade of ladders. Crews wear harnesses when they should. It shouldn’t be notable, but it is.
Parking plans matter. Nothing derails a day faster than a car anchored under the only workable spot to reach a gable. We ask managers to assign temporary overflow zones, then back it up with reminders taped to garage doors 48 hours in advance. If a car still blocks, we shift to another elevation and keep production moving instead of fighting a tow. Predictable, courteous access keeps goodwill intact.
The materials that pay for themselves
Communities live with their choices for years. The cheapest per-gallon option rarely wins when you zoom out to lifecycle costs. We spec mid- to top-tier lines that balance coverage, color retention, and flexibility to handle substrate movement. On stucco, a breathable elastomeric or high-build acrylic reduces hairline telegraphing and slows water intrusion at microcracks. On fiber cement, a premium 100 percent acrylic with strong UV resistance holds color and resists chalking. For trim, we prefer a urethane-modified acrylic in satin for durability without a plasticky look.
We track production rates honestly: a crew can cover 250 to 350 square feet of complexity per hour on average, lower on buildings with heavy trim. If a spec needs an extra coat to hide a color change, we budget the time instead of hoping a miracle happens. The difference between two and three coats across 60,000 square feet is big money and should be discussed before a single brush hits the wall.
Communication that people actually read
Most residents don’t care what alkyd means. They care whether they can barbecue Saturday. We strip jargon from notices. Here’s what to expect, when to expect it, and what we need from you. Dogs inside during wash. Move planters off the patio on Wednesday. Garage doors will be open two inches for drying; we’ll leave a wedge.
For larger residential complex painting service projects, we host a brief meet-and-greet in the courtyard the week before start. Ten to twenty people show up, ask good questions, and put faces to names. The tone you set there — respectful, responsive, competent — carries you through the odd hiccup when a lift arrives late or rain steals a day.
Managing edge cases without drama
Every community has the unit with a satellite dish bolted through the fascia and the homeowner who swears their door color is grandfathered. Experience helps. We photograph edge cases and log them by unit number, then work through them with the manager or board liaison. If something truly is grandfathered, we paint around it and note it for the next cycle. If it’s not, we offer a clean fix: relocate the dish to a mounting plate, patch the holes, and prime to stop rust stains bleeding through.
Weather plays spoiler at least once on every multi-week project. When rain threatens, we shift to protected areas: breezeways, downspout prep under eaves, metalwork priming. We never stretch the envelope on recoat times just to call a building “done.” Paint that looks dry at 3 p.m. can ghost or block overnight if humidity spikes. We’d rather be a day late than leave a thumbprint in a door at dawn.
The money conversation: pricing, packages, and reserves
Boards ask two questions early: how much and how long will it last. Honest ranges depend on access, substrate, and detail level, but a well-planned townhouse community repaint often lands between 2.50 and 5.50 per square foot of paintable surface in many markets. Metal rail upgrades, extensive wood repair, or lift-heavy access can push above that. We break the price into logical chunks so boards can see levers: washing and prep, primers, body coats, trims and doors, metalwork, carpentry repairs.
Multi-home painting packages create economies. When we can mobilize once, stage materials centrally, and keep the same crew on a rhythm, the production rate climbs and the cost per unit drops. Apartment complex exterior upgrades and mixed-use properties can save meaningfully by bundling buildings rather than piecemeal work each year. The reserve study likes predictable cycles, and so do we.
As for longevity, the honest answer is driven by exposure. South and west elevations under harsh sun might look superb for eight years and acceptable for ten. North elevations in shade will often hold paint longer but may need earlier washing to stop mildew. Stucco with high-build acrylic can stretch toward twelve years if maintained; wood trim on windward corners may want freshening at seven to eight. We recommend an HOA repainting and maintenance plan that includes light washing at year three or four and targeted touch-ups to keep the whole property looking even until the big cycle returns.
Carpentry and repairs: the hidden half of the job
Paint doesn’t fix rot. It hides it, briefly. A strong shared property painting service bakes carpentry into the plan. We probe suspect trim, check window sills, and pull back gutters where staining suggests trouble. On a recent project, twenty-six linear feet of fascia looked intact from the ground. The moisture meter told another story. We replaced it before paint, back-primed cuts, and sealed joints. That section will now ride through the next cycle without swelling or peeling.
For communities built in the late 90s and early 2000s, pay attention to butt joints and mitered trim corners where builder-grade caulk has failed. Those are water entry points. If we see the same failure repeating, we change the detail: larger joint with backer rod and a high-performance sealant that moves with seasonal expansion and contraction. A little detail work saves thousands in call-backs.
Coordination with other trades
Painting rarely happens in a vacuum. Roofers, landscapers, and gutter cleaners all want the same weather windows. Tidel Remodeling prefers to follow roof replacements by a few weeks to avoid scuffs and nail debris on fresh paint. If gutter replacement is on deck, we stage painting to avoid coating brackets that will be removed. Lighting upgrades pair nicely with a repaint; we patch old fixtures cleanly and align new backplates so the final look is intentional.
On a gated community painting contractor project with tight access hours, we built a shared calendar with the landscaper. They paused blowers on our trim days to keep dust off wet paint, and we avoided painting along beds during mulch deliveries. Two emails and the whole site looked better at the end.
Documentation that protects the HOA
Residents move. Boards change. What endures is the record. We deliver a closeout package with color formulas, sheen levels, product lines, batch numbers for final deliveries, warranty terms, and a map noting the sequence of work and any special conditions. For communities with variations in building orientation or dye lots, those records matter when a single building needs a mid-cycle repair.
We also document any deviations approved by the board — different door colors for specific courts, omitted fence lines, or owner-responsible surfaces that were painted at their cost. Clear records head off future disputes and shorten the learning curve when the community goes out to bid next time.
What residents notice most — and how to deliver it
After a repaint, people will comment on color first, then lines. Clean cut-ins at stone or stucco transitions show craft. Straight eaves with crisp drip edges make everything look newer. Doors that close without sticking after paint tell residents you cared enough to pull weatherstripping or let coatings cure before reinstalling sweeps. Small gestures matter: placing the welcome mat back square, wiping overspray mist from a mailbox, leaving a simple “wet paint” tag with the hour written by hand.
Noise and courtesy stick, too. Crews that greet residents, keep music low, and take breaks away from windows leave a better memory than crews that act like the property is empty. We train for that.
When a phased approach makes sense
Not every HOA has the reserves to repaint the entire property in one go. Phasing can still look coherent if it’s planned. We group buildings in logical pods, keep color families intact within pods, and aim to complete a full elevation loop rather than scattering buildings across the site. Coordinated exterior painting projects in phases benefit from strict batch control of paint and documented spray tip sizes and pressures, so texture and sheen stay consistent even if Building 9 happens a year after Building 3.
We also set price escalators in the contract tied to material index changes, not guesswork. That transparency helps boards compare phased bids apples to apples.
A brief, practical checklist for boards
Confirm current approved color formulas, sheens, and where they apply Decide in advance how doors, gates, and owner modifications will be handled Align repaint timing with roof, gutter, and landscape schedules Establish a single point of contact for the contractor and for residents Reserve contingency funds for carpentry repairs discovered during prep
Why Tidel Remodeling is a good fit for community-scale work
You can spot companies that do this kind of work by the way they talk about it. They know where the friction lives. authoritative roofing consultation They bring extra drop cloths for breezeways and spare garage wedges for drying. They staff a lead who answers their phone and doesn’t hide behind email. At Tidel, we built our systems around communities: multi-home painting packages that protect budgets, property management painting solutions that keep communication tight, and field crews who respect shared spaces like they live there.
We’ve served as an HOA-approved exterior painting contractor on properties with complex CC&Rs and as a residential complex painting service for garden-style apartments where color had to guide wayfinding. We’ve helped a townhouse association recover from a patchwork of unapproved door colors by offering a weekend door clinic — we painted forty-two doors across two Saturdays with a small, fast crew. The neighborhood finally looked like itself again.
Maintenance after the last brushstroke
A repaint is a start, not an end. We recommend a light wash program every two to three years to remove pollutants and organic growth, especially on shaded elevations and near sprinklers. Door hardware overspray, windborne dust, and spider webs at eaves can age a building before the paint fails. Small touch-ups with stored gallons labeled by building and date keep presentation high at minimal cost.
If you store touch-up paint onsite, keep cans off concrete floors and note the exposure where it was used. Sun ages paint, so a shaded north wall touch-up might still match a saved can two years later, while a west wall usually won’t. When color shift is inevitable, feather touch-ups wider or bump the whole panel. The goal is a finish that looks intentional, not patched.
The promise we make
Repainting a community is equal parts logistics and craft. Do it right and property values lift, pride returns, and daily life barely hiccups. Cut corners and the neighborhood spends years living with reminders. Tidel Remodeling commits to the former — thoughtful planning, careful prep, sensible product choices, and communication that respects people’s time.
If your board is weighing bids now, invite us to walk a building with you. We’ll show you where dollars should go, where they don’t need to, and how to phase the work if reserves run tight. Whether you manage a condo corridor near transit, a set of townhomes tucked behind a gate, or an apartment complex due for exterior upgrades, we’re ready to help your repaint feel as coordinated as it looks.