Painters... rant

I don’t want to bash painters as a profession, but holy sheet they think they are made of gold. I inquired about having the inside of my shop painted, ceilings white and walls grey. Everything was already masked off, shop is empty,
and I would provide the paint. They provided the labor. I got quotes of $4,000-$6,000

For $434 in paint, $117 to rent a scissor lift, and about 5 hours time I painted it myself. Now I’m thinking I should take my savings a buy me a new trailer,,, anybody agree with this logic?

Well looks like it needs another coat but looking good

That, or switch professions and enjoy the new pay scale.

Streaks go away after it dried?

DIK!


BigPig, I’ll run that rig fer ya

You are just seeing streaks after a little puff, puff, give.....

No one will notice streaks in 3 weeks. They ain't cheap or good usually! Nice!

Painters are expensive!

The streaks you are seeing are mainly due to the unevenness in the texture and thickness of the foam.

I could understand a $4-$6,000 quote is there was a lot of trim work to be done, but this is a wide open blank canvas

"I painted it myself" did you start drinking at 9 or 10?

We just had our house painted. It was the same way. We provided all paint and it was a fortune. They said it would take a month. It took 3 days.

I need to have my little lake house painted on the outside. I will not even bother getting a quote. Last time I needed it painted I got quotes over 4k. Which came out to about 800 dollars a gallon with me buying the paint.

I'll paint it myself.

I hate painting and refuse to do it. That being said, every painter I’ve hired has done a job that I could never achieve no matter how long I spent trying to make it look professional. It’s expensive, but worth it to me, to hire a pro.

I respect the hell out of people who refuse to hire a painter, because I hate it so much, especially a job as large as that. But, $4k after you bought everything and did the hardest part (taping everything off)? Yeah, sounds like they were trying to decline your business by giving you a crazy estimate.

Sounds like it's gone up a bunch. Hell I think we spent $5,300 when we had our house built 6-7 years ago - that included interior, exterior, and staining/clearcoat on all cabinets - and all materials (wasn't cheap paint either). 4-6K to do a shop sounds insane. Wife mentioned she wanted a different color recently - guess I'll be doing it myself.

I'm with you. I'd rather dig a ditch then paint a wall.

The taping everything off was likely done by the insulating crew.

5 hours and saved $4,000 = New toy for the shop?

Or new gun.

I had the entire outside of my Brick house painted. Sand blasted, primer, painted window seals for 1700.00 2 years ago.

That was a good deal! I need the name and number of that painter! Lol

If you think painters are expensive try finding a plumber who’s reasonable as well. A skilled trade like those can pay well and can get paid pretty good money if they are good. The bad ones not so much

Also I wonder if the painters you got the quote from based it off of the type of neighborhood you live in?

I ran into the same thing when I had my shop spray foamed. They wanted as much to paint it as the spray foam and it was already all taped off. I went with no paint on the sidewalls and put up 3/4 inch plywood myself much cheaper.

So are mechanics.

Interest rates in recent years and the explosion of new construction, as well as remodeling the purchases of existing homes, has caused some huge increases in costs of some aspects of home construction. I've heard of some huge differences in paint estimates for new homes here.

Some tradesmen that live around here in Sulphur Springs are working in DFW and around the lakes because they can easily get paid better than here. I guess they found deeper pockets in DFW and the lakes.

This virus may change some of that. Just this morning the pending home sales numbers dropped. For painters that is fewer remodels. Almost every time I show a home the conversation between spouses is about changes / remodeling. Watch House Hunters on HGTV. They are always talking about makeovers.

https://www.zerohedge.com/personal-finance/pending-home-sales-plummet-35-yoy-biggest-drop-ever

So based upon your logic BP....you should be able to paint my house for less than 2k....PayPal sent, let me know when you can start

Shop looks great!

Not me.

I don’t charge much, if I charge at all....

We are having the exterior of our two story home painted. It's a large home and it will be some work.
I got three quotes to power wash, caulk, replace any wood and paint, they buy the paint and I wanted Sherwin Williams paint.
The numbers came back as - $3800, $4500 and $6300.

I had seen the quality of the work that the lowest bid company has done and it was outstanding.
An easy choice, but it's hard to understand how there could be that much difference.

agree with reeltexan, amazing at the price differences out there. We just had our entire exterior painted last week. 100% brick, so merely soffit, trim, large ceiling over patio, door trim, garage doors & trim, dormer upstairs & all trim, gutters everything power washed prior to start ... They replaced all the trim on the dormer due to some rotting (last painter didn't replace) and a couple of other places with rotted wood (one place with carpenter ants, exterminator came this morning for those) and taped the brick. ... They provided all materials and labor, they estimated 2 days but ended up being 2-1/2 days due to the amount of replacement stuff on the dormer. final bill $2940. They did very good work!

we had other estimates in the $5000-7500 range for the same amount of work.

Could have landed a couple dudes from the home depot parking lot for probably $500 each

true story I'll contacted Lefty a few times and he's walking me through a few issues and has volunteered his labor but I have been able to take care of everything without him up to this point. One of these days I will be buying him a case of beer though I'm sure. Actually called another THFee and asked Is he for real when he says he'll do something He's not just blowing smoke? they said no He really likes to help people out.

Contractors are all over the place....When I got the quote for my outdoor kitchen there was a $2000 difference in the two bids for just the stone work.

Also, I got a quote to paint the entire outside of my house (painted brick), and it's a good sized house, and the quote was $10,500 all-in.

I would have built straight walls. Prolly harder to paint those curved walls which increased their estimate.

<shrugs>

I know dnb, I’ve met the blind fella before.

Paint companies,, here in Central Texas, try pricing a farm fence. Over in fayette county years ago, and know things go up, 5 strand barbwire fence ran around $2.00 to 3 bucks a foot. Here around Lake LBJ , $6 to $10 bucks a foot with a rock clause that will kill ya..

A contractor would be a fool to not get a rock clause.

I used to run a paint company. It always made me chuckle when the customer offered to buy the materials as if they were doing us some sort of favor or by doing so would somehow reduce their price by 40%

Two kinds of painters...good ones and bad ones. On a wide open shop like that, to spray it I would have charged $1.75/sq of surface area. To do a good paint job, there is a lot more involved than most people think.

You don’t have to air hammer the line posts and T-Posts in Fayette county. Llano County is solid granite in most places.

As to trophy said there is good and bad painters and same with all trades. Doesn’t mean a bad painter can’t do a good job some of the time. There are a lot of ways to do most stuff. Some good contractors spend more money and don’t cut corners. May end up with the same result on some jobs and it works to be cheap. The problem is the ones that something doesn’t work out the good ones make sure hat doesn’t happen. Better labor better products building protection insurance lots of factors. Also most residential projects when it’s more than painting of course there are not blue prints to bid From so each guy has a few different ways to skin the cat so to speak. I’ve bid stuff been high and then seen the job when it was done and it was nothing like I was bidding. Just saying lots of factors in most things. In the original pic shown I would think most contractors/painters will agree it needs another coat at the least. I cant get away with telling a customer the walls are wavy and insulation is thick in some spots. As the home owner you only have to satisfy yourself. Not picking on you bp love the shop and it’s looking good.

The lower half has 3 coats and the top half has 2. There are discolorations but every area that’s discolored is a drastically different texture. Some area where there is a sheen the insulation is smooth as butter. Other parts it’s rough like 40 grit sand paper, and other areas are very lumpy/pitted. It’s going to take a lot more than 2 or 3 coats to fix that kind of texture difference.

I didn’t do this for looks, I did it to protect the insulation which breaks down from UV light. Most of what you see won’t be seen once I move into it.

Your wife cannot wait for that moment. It looks awesome though

We got a quote of $2500 to paint our kitchen cabinets, new doors, so minimal sanding or prep involved. We did it ourselves for around $450 including a new airless sprayer and materials. They turned out great, and my better half is happy we saved money, so bonus points for me.