Multifamily interiors: unit finish packages, turns and amenity spaces

The property manager handed us a spreadsheet with forty-eight units on it and a column of dates that did not move. Fourteen were vacant that week. The rest came empty over the next four months, a few at a time, and every one of them had to come back looking like the model. That is what interior work in an apartment community looks like from the inside: a long list of small rooms, one finish package, and a calendar that belongs to leasing.

The finish package is the product

Unit interiors are not designed one at a time. There is a package: a cabinet door and pull, a countertop, a floor, a paint color, a light and hardware set, and a group of plumbing fixtures. Our work is to put that package into every unit the same way, in the order leasing wants the units released. We finish one unit first as the control, walk it with the property team and the designer, settle the details there, and then that unit is the standard the crews work to. Everything after it is a repeat, which is the point.

The same finish on unit fifty as on unit one

Volume is where finish quality usually slips. The tile layout drifts, the caulk lines get sloppier, the touch-up gets thinner, and by the third release the units no longer match the model somebody leased from. We hold the line by keeping the work on our own payroll. Framing, drywall, paint, tile, stone and millwork are our crews, so the painter who cut in the first unit is cutting in the fiftieth, and our superintendent punches every unit against the control before it is turned over. A miss gets fixed in the release it happened in, not on a warranty list six months later.

Turns run on their own clock

A turn is the work between one resident moving out and the next moving in, and it is measured in days, not weeks. Every vacant day is rent nobody collects. So a turn is patch and paint, flooring, hardware, a counter or a cabinet front if the last resident was hard on it, a fixture swap, then a clean and a punch. On an occupied property we hold a standing crew and a standing scope, which gives the property manager a known number of days per unit and one number to call when a unit has to be ready by Friday.

Batching by release, not by unit

The schedule that works is a release schedule. Twelve units get one demolition pass, one drywall pass, one paint pass, one flooring pass and one trim-out pass, and the crews move through the stack in the same order every time. Material comes in by release too, staged in a unit or a garage bay we hold for it, so nobody carries tile up three flights the morning it is needed. Batching is also how the number stays predictable: the fifth release costs about what the fourth did.

Models, leasing offices and the amenity floor

People sign a lease standing in a model unit and sitting down in a leasing office, so those two spaces get finished early and get finished properly. The amenity floor is the same argument: the clubhouse, the fitness room, the mail and package room, the coworking rooms, the coffee bar millwork, the corridors and the elevator lobbies. Those are the rooms a prospect walks before anybody shows a floor plan. We schedule them to be done when leasing starts, not when the last release closes out.

Furniture is part of the handover

Our own crew receives, inspects, stages, installs and punches the furniture, fixtures and equipment for the models, the leasing office and the amenity spaces. That includes checking what arrived against what was ordered, and chasing the replacement for the chair that showed up damaged. A model with a sofa still in the box is not a model.

What moves the number

Unit count and release size, how many floor plans the community has, the finish level, and how much of the existing kitchen and bath stays. Occupied work costs more than vacant work, because protection, quiet hours and resident notice all take time. Walk-up stacks with no elevator move slower than a mid-rise with a service car. Long-lead items, cabinets, counters and light fixtures, need ordering before the first demolition day, or the schedule waits on them.

We are licensed and insured, and our project manager is on the property every week. Send the unit count, the floor plan set and the finish package, or the turn scope for an occupied community, and we will lay the releases out against your lease-up dates.