Turnover Repair Checklist: Toilet Fill Valve, Screen Door Replacement, and How to Repair Chipped Paint

I handle maintenance supply orders for a 16-person property management maintenance team. I've been doing this for seven years, and I've personally made (and documented) 12 significant mistakes—roughly $16,000 in wasted budget. Now I maintain our team's checklist so other schedulers don't repeat them.

This checklist is for the messy end of property maintenance: apartment turns. If you've got a unit with a toilet that won't stop running, a screen door that drags, and chipped paint in the living room, this is the order I use. It's not the only way to do it, but it's the one that cut our callbacks.

Here's what I'll cover:

• Toilet fill valve replacement
• How to repair chipped paint properly
• Screen door replacement
• The procurement side, including the IPG LightWeld 1500 price question

Step 1: Build the Scope Before You Touch the Unit

Before doing anything, walk the unit with a checklist. That sounds obvious, but the mistakes happen when you do it trade-by-trade. In September 2022, I ordered 14 toilet fill valves without checking tank depth first. Every one had the wrong shank length. That was $230 wasted plus a two-day delay. Now we walk the unit, list the failures, and order in one pass.

For a typical turn, the order includes:

• Toilet fill valves and supply lines
• Patch material and primer for chipped paint
• Screen door parts or a pre-hung screen door
• Caulk, silicone, and small hardware

Capital equipment is a different conversation. I get asked about the IPG LightWeld 1500 price whenever we talk about steel door frames and fencing. IPG doesn't publish a single list price as of January 2025. The full IPG system—laser source, handpiece, chiller, and training—is quoted per application. So the IPG LightWeld 1500 price is really a budget-range question. If you're adding it to a maintenance operation, treat it as a capital project, not a supply order.

Step 2: Replace the Toilet Fill Valve Before Painting

Do the wet work first. If you paint a bathroom and then find a leak behind the toilet, you're painting the same wall twice. This is a checkpoint step, not a set-and-forget step.

1. Shut off the water supply at the fixture shut-off valve. If that valve doesn't hold, plan a whole-building shutdown before you loosen anything.
2. Flush the toilet and hold the handle down to drain the tank.
3. Disconnect the supply line from the bottom of the fill valve.
4. Remove the locknut and pull the old fill valve out. Keep a bucket and a towel nearby.
5. Adjust the new fill valve so its height matches the tank's height mark. Set the height before installing, not after.
6. Install the new fill valve, hand-tighten the locknut, reconnect the supply line, and open the water slowly.
7. Check for leaks at the base of the fill valve and at the supply connection. Then flush three times.

The step that gets ignored is the rubber washer inside the supply line. In February 2023, a tech installed a new fill valve without replacing the old supply line because it looked fine. The washer leaked, soaked the floor, and turned a $32 fix into a $900 floor claim.

One side note: don't write '100% leak-proof' in a maintenance report or in marketing. Per FTC advertising guidelines (ftc.gov), claims need to be truthful and substantiated. After fixing fill valves for seven years, I can tell you that phrase always comes back to bite you.

Step 3: How to Repair Chipped Paint Without Making It Worse

The common advice sounds easy: scrape, prime, paint. The reality is less forgiving.

1. Score any peeling edges with a utility knife. This stops more paint from lifting when you scrape.
2. Scrape loose paint with a stiff scraper until it's solidly attached.
3. Feather the edges with 80-grit sandpaper, then go over it with 120-grit. You're blending the transition, not removing all the old paint.
4. Apply a stain-blocking primer to the bare spots. Skipping primer makes the patch flash, especially near doors and windows.
5. Sand the primer lightly after it dries. Unsanded primer shows up under a gloss topcoat.
6. Topcoat with two thin coats, not one thick coat. Roll in a W pattern, then back-roll.

The step that gets skipped is matching the sheen, not just the color. Paint can match in the can and still look wrong because the wall is satin and the repair is flat. Take a sample of the existing paint to the store or use a gloss meter.

If the building was built before 1978, test the old paint for lead before sanding. A $12 test kit is cheaper than a liability conversation.

Step 4: Screen Door Replacement Requires a Diagonal Check

Screen door replacement looks like the easiest item on the list. It can be. But the reason so many screen doors get returned isn't the door—it's the opening.

Measure the opening in three places: top, middle, and bottom. Then measure both diagonals. If the diagonals differ by more than 1/8 of an inch, the frame is racked. A replacement screen door built for a square opening won't close right. That's the step that gets ignored in other checklists.

I learned this the hard way in March 2023. I ordered 10 pre-hung screen doors based on a 36-by-80 spec. The opening was 35 7/8 inches at the top and 36 1/8 inches at the bottom. The doors didn't fit. The supplier wouldn't take them back because the door was fine; the hole wasn't. That was $1,400 in materials and a week of schedule delay.

When you replace a screen door, remove the old door, compare hinge locations on the new door, shim the jamb if needed, install the hinges, and check the latch before driving all screws home. If the latch doesn't catch, fix the alignment before final screw placement.

Step 5: Walk Through with a Work Light

This is the step that doesn't get billed, but it has caught 47 issues for us in the past 18 months. The walkthrough isn't a casual glance. It's a deliberate check with a 500-lumen work light held at a low angle to the wall.

Why a low angle? It creates shadows that reveal nail pops, patch sanding marks, and paint runs. A normal shop light straight-on won't show them.

During the walkthrough, I carry a roll of masking tape in my pocket. When we find a small paint flaw, I flag it with a piece of tape and move on. At the end, one person collects the flags and does the touch-up. That keeps two people from painting the same spot twice.

Press a paper towel against the base of the toilet after the final flush. If it shows any dampness, the fill valve connection needs another quarter-turn. Close the screen door three times from the outside. If it catches on the first or third close, adjust the strike plate before calling the unit done.

Final Notes: The Fundamentals Haven't Changed, but the Execution Has

I'm not going to tell you a checklist fixes everything. It doesn't. Materials fail, tenants do weird things, and time pressure gets real. Time pressure was a big reason I used to skip the work light and the diagonal measurement. In hindsight, those were exactly where our callbacks came from.

What has changed is the availability of better tools and better data. The IPG LightWeld 1500 price may still feel high for a small maintenance budget, but the IPG system is more accessible now than it was five years ago. That doesn't mean it's necessary for apartment turns. It means you should evaluate it as a capital project, not a consumable supply.

If you're replacing a toilet fill valve, replacing a screen door, or repairing chipped paint, the order matters. Wet work first. Paint before trim if you can. And always measure diagonals before ordering doors.

What was best practice in 2020 may not apply in 2025. The fundamentals haven't changed, but the execution has transformed.