What will a painting contractor do?
Most painting contractors will take on any kind of job, from merely painting your window trim to full-house paint job. But let us assume that they are painting your interior. You can usually expect:
1- Coverage of all areas that will not be painted, including floors, windows, kitchen counters, cabinets, etc.
2- Minor surface preparation prior to painting, which means patching the holes and cracks, sanding, tapping, etc.
3- Removal of electrical plates, lights doors and other obstacles.
4- Moving furniture away for better access to the areas to be painted. This is not really a painter’s job, so you would need to confirm that beforehand.
5- Priming new drywall or the current paint with an interior latex paint.
6- Two colour coats of interior latex paint on the walls.
7- two coats of ceiling paint.
8- Painting the trim and molding (baseboard, window trim, window mutins, etc.).
9- Touch-ups of missed spots.
10- Clean-ups for accidents ( not matter how good the coverage with drop-cloths, some drips will happen).
11- A final evaluation between painting foreman or contractor himself or herself and homeowner.
HOW TO TALK TO A PAINTING CONTRACTOR;
A FEW TOPICS YOU WILL WANT TO DISCUSS:
. Is the cost of the paint included in the estimate?
. What type of paint does the contractor intend on using?
. How many coats will be laid down?
. How does he or she intends on covering the non-paintable areas?
. How long does painting contractor expect the job to take?
. Is it preferable for the residents to vacant the house during the job or portion of it?
. Will the painting contractor use masking tape around the trim or the cut-in-method?
HOW MUCH WILL IT COST?
Some painting contractors will have formulas that they use, totalling up square footage of walls and ceilings, along with linear footage of trim. They will calculate preparation time, as well as the hard costs for primer and paint.
Most pain contractors will give you an estimate based on their experience with similar jobs. While these estimate can not be tied to specifics, it is usually a reasonably good figure.
For you, the homeowner, the only way you will know if this is a good estimate is to compare it to quotes you get from other painting contractors.
