State Specific Question About: CALIFORNIA (CA)

Yea! My horrible tenant moved out, but left some paint damages. There are holes in every wall. She did a half-ass patch job. She smeared the wall with patch material well outside of the hole. I used the same brand and color of paint, but I could not get an exact match and the unit was freshly painted 8 months ago. So the bad patch job shows through the new paint. I will have to repaint the walls to get them even.

mick,

Great example of how DEPRECIATION is not the issue, DAMAGE is the issue. I see the lumpy spackle work as damage which must be repaired, then the spackle must be painted over.

My lease is clear: res pays for damage caused by his/her negligence. Repainting is pre-agreed at $250 per room.

Don't want to pay that price? Don't mess up the walls!

Anything is negotiable so get the res to agree. Gotta know YOUR judge to knw if it will stand up IF taken to court.

Crazi Cali may be a different story.

The answer to your question is that you cannot EASILY charge the tenant for a complete repaint. The ease or difficulty would depend on how badly the tenant REALLY damaged the walls.

First, you should learn about paining walls under rental conditions. The same brand and color of paint is not enough to get results that match well enough. Different batches of paint may have different characteristics, especially if you use cheap paint. Decent paint doesn't necessarily cost more. Evidently, the paint you have chosen won't even cover a patch.

By the way, I started using an outstanding brand of paint (SINCLAIRS [Antique White], available only on the West Coast) back in 1983. Sinclair paint was sold to Imperial Chemicals when the owner of Sinclair Paint finally passed away, and the color was passed on to Dulux Paint who manufactured their own paint, but using the Sinclair colors, and then to Glidden Paint, who changed the color name but still sell the same color under a different name (French White). It is now sold in Home Depot in a variety of paint grades at different prices, but the color remains the same. The HD store will mix up a gallon with the computer using any grade of Glidden tint base. After all these years, the color still matches perfectly, both flat and semi-gloss. I use the lowest (cheapest) grade of Glidden tint base that doesn't run down the roller handle when I lift it up (ULTRAHIDE 250) and I haven't done a complete repaint in any of my apartments since around those early days.

I don't know exactly what you mean about the poor quality of the patching. Having patch material outside of the hole doesn't sound like a problem for me. If it is really bad, use a little palm sander for one second to smooth it out and don't get so excited.

If you can show the judge that it was REALLY NECESSARY for you to completely repaint due to the action of the tenant, then he will allow you the reasonable cost. But CA has very good judges, and don't expect him to be a fool, unless you take an inexperienced Judge Pro Tem. Experienced judges, especially those that sit on housing cases (including Small Claims Court) will likely know a lot more than you think about painting and maintenance, and they will allow you credit for genuine losses while preventing you from taking a windfall at the tenants' expense. He will treat you as a professional whose job is to be knowledgeable about your responsibilities. Don't disappoint him.

@Linda, I had no idea she would just slap some crap on the wall. Imagine a quarter-sized hole that was covered with spackle the size of an adult hand or bigger.

@Brad, definitely damage. I'm not even sure what was used to spackle the holes. Plus there was dirt and grime on the walls that would not wash out, so that had to be covered. The baseboards had to have touch up paint too.

@Moshe, I will only paint entire walls where the first paint job did not cover the patch job. The handyguy noted on the invoice that the color was uneven. I used Behr mid-grade paint from HD.