The right order to do finishing work in a flat renovation
The Abimeister team · Updated · 4 min read
Most renovation delays and wasted materials come from doing things in the wrong order, not from bad workmanship. A flooring contractor turned away because the walls aren't plastered yet, a painted wall chased open for a socket, a tiled bathroom drilled into for a pipe that should have gone in weeks earlier. The sequence below is the one tradespeople follow on ordinary Tallinn flats, from Soviet-era panel blocks to new-build developments, and it holds regardless of the size of the job.
Why the order matters at all
Finishing trades build on top of each other. Flooring needs finished walls behind it, painting needs a flat surface with no chases cut into it, and fixtures need tiled or painted walls to sit against. Do them out of sequence and one trade has to undo another's work.
The cost isn't only time. Chasing a wall for a cable after it's been plastered means replastering that patch and repainting the wall once it's dry. Materials bought for one stage often end up wasted or duplicated when a later stage forces rework.
Where renovation starts: walls and ceiling before anything else
Before any surface finish goes on, the walls and ceiling need to be structurally sound and flat. In older Tallinn flats this usually means replastering uneven plaster walls or lining them with plasterboard, especially where old wallpaper or paint has been stripped back to reveal cracks and hollow patches.
Plasterboard is also the practical fix for boxing in pipework, straightening a wonky wall, or building a new partition without touching a load-bearing structure. This stage sets the geometry for everything that follows, so it's worth getting it right rather than rushing to painting. Plasterboard work of this kind typically starts from 28 € per job.
Electrics and plumbing roughing-in comes before any covering finish
Once walls and ceilings are structurally ready but before they're painted or tiled, this is the point to run new cabling, move sockets, add lighting circuits, or reroute pipework. Chases get cut, cables and pipes go in, and everything is tested before it disappears behind a finish.
Electrical work should be done by a qualified electrician, particularly when it involves the switchboard or new circuits. Getting this stage finished properly avoids the single most common cause of rework: needing to open up a finished wall for a socket nobody thought to add earlier.
Flooring goes down before paint, not after
Flooring is one of the more disruptive stages: cutting, sanding, and fitting skirting all throw up dust, and it's far easier to protect bare walls from that than to protect a fresh paint job. Fitting floors first also means skirting boards can be scribed and sealed against the wall before the final coat of paint covers the join.
This applies whether you're fitting laminate over a levelled screed in a new-build with underfloor heating, or refinishing parquet in a 1930s Kalamaja flat. Flooring work is generally quoted from 15 € per job depending on the material and the state of the base beneath it.
Painting and decorating finish the walls and ceiling before tiling
With floors down and protected, walls and ceilings get their final coats. Painting is usually the last dusty, messy stage before the more precise finishing work begins, which is why it comes before tiling rather than after: tiled surfaces are difficult to mask well against fresh paint, and paint splashes are far easier to avoid on bare wall than on finished tile.
Decorating work, from filling and sanding to the final coats, is generally quoted from 12 € per job. Doing this before tiling also means any wall imperfections get caught and corrected while they're still easy to fix.
Tiling and sanitary fittings are left until the very end
Tiling in a bathroom or kitchen, and fitting sanitary ware such as a shower tray, toilet, or sink, go in last because they're the most precise and least forgiving stage. A tiled wall installed too early gets scratched by other trades working around it, and taps or a toilet fitted before the final wall finish is dry risk being knocked or splashed.
This is also where plumbing connections get finished off and sealed, once the roughing-in from earlier is confirmed to be in the right place. Getting the order right here means the bathroom or kitchen is used once and looks finished, rather than needing a second pass to fix marks or gaps.
- Walls and ceiling: plaster or plasterboard first
- Electrics and plumbing: rough in cables and pipes before any covering
- Flooring: fit before the final paint coat
- Painting and decorating: finish walls and ceiling before tiling
- Tiling and sanitary fittings: install last, once everything else is sealed and dry
Walls and ceiling first, then electrics and plumbing roughed in, then flooring, then painting, and tiling and fittings last: skipping this order is what causes rework.