i need some advice about painting prices. please.
my regular painter charges by the sqft. example exterior 2000 sqft home at 2.50=$5000.00 , interior 2000 x 3.50=$7000.00. i hired a fellow about 2 months ago whos wife left him and he has to pay child support for 3 kids. he doesnt have a lot of carpentry skills but is a pretty good learner and shows up everyday.
he says he has painting experience. so i say ok . i m building a 1029 sqft home. and he says he will do it for $1.75 sqft and i buy the paint. i say ok. so he measures all the walls and calculates sqft area that way. he is a one man crew and reg painter has a lot of help.
my question is how do painters price in your areas.
thanks in advance
tyke
Just another day in paradise
Replies
Wait a minute .
It appears the first painter is pricing by sq ft of floor area only.
It appears that the single guy is figuring walls which is normally2.5 times the floor area. You said he was measuing walls . But you are also furnishing paint .
It also doesnt sound like its heads up abilities.
The crew furnishing WC?
Youre leaving too much to guessing.
Tim
In my area most don't have any idea at all how to estimate and somewhere along the way one guy concocted a number based on sq feet and now pretty much everyone says I'll do it for X per sf of floor and nobody ever knows or understands whether or not they're making a mint or losing their shirt. That's the honest answer. Painters that want to stay employed are at the whim of the builders who have gotten used to the idea that the painter is one sub they can wrench down on when it comes to cost.
Now remodeling, being a different ball game, you can't go in and blow through and be in and out. Not like new construction. So the painters that do get in to remodels seem to look at their new home price and bump it based on gut feeling.
But I'm a bean counter. I look at square feet. Paint vs stain. How much prep is required. Priming. How much masking - which can be a huge deal in an occupied house. My opinion is, to make any sense of it, you have to assosciate a task with a value, and you have to be able to back check that value against the set of circumstances which you have. I might have 25 cents a foot for some paint task. But that comes with a whole slough of variables that may or may not be in place at any given job. So I need to also be able to stand there, look at the job, and see what's really going to be involved in going from start to finish.
You might have a line item in your estimate for lacquering a hollow core flat door, no stain. Say its 50 bucks. If it's new, and you have 40 of them, and they're all standing in the garage and it's summer, great. But you don't get the same return when there's 2 and its winter and the house is occupied and there's nowhere to spray so you have to take them off site and find somewhere you can spray them, then bring them back, and not muss them up in transit.
"If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man." - Mark Twain
To better answer your question;
Unless its track work thats the same , its stupid to price by the foot. Its stupid for the painter to figgure it that way and get set in . One of the worst mistakes . Commonly the problems come to play when you change your mind on the finish schedule. That sells the same price for stain and laquer to paint grade trim? What if you put unfinished cabinets in ? What if the door schedule calls for all closet louver doors?
So to help you , your bidding is wide open . You can start adding upgrades on these guys and they will do it for free.
Tim
thanks Mooney,
this is new construction. my guy is painting the exterior right now. and its preprimed hardi lap. and all the trim is your basic white. i called my usual painter this morning and told the situation abd he didnt mind discussing it with me. you see he hsa to catch a ferry here and he charges travel time. and i expect that. he confirmed that he could do the job at 1029 x 2.50 which includes him supplying the paint. he also said if he lived here he would charge me $2 instead of 2.50.
so for the xterior my guy/employeee wants to charge me 2600.00 plus i buy the paint at $450.00 = 3050.00. whareas my usual painter would charge in or around 2600.00 for materials and labor. and sure i have allowed 3200.00 for the ext. painting so i am still under but most of my cut is gone and we all know thats no way to stay in business.
tyke
Just another day in paradise
It seems lot's of people like that "x amount per square foot figure". I think it is a way for the builder to compare Bob's painting crew with Joes' painting crew. I'm a finish carpenter and I get the same thing "How much to trim my house per foot?" There are too many variables to really get a good number, but I still give a per/foot bid at times. What I hate is when I say yes I can do that house for $1.50/sqft and the contractor says "well my guy can do it for 1.40. On a 3000sq foot house your talking 300 bucks or about one day's wages for one guy. I don't need to get in a biding war.
The painter's I worked with had 2 guys doing interior/exterior paint at $700/day.
Your house 1000 sq sounds small I would say if it's not 2 story's and weather was nice it would be easy to paint in 3 days with 2 guys more like 2 days. So at 3 days your looking at $2100 plus paint at 450 so $2600 sounds like your in the ballpark.
Jeff
right. except i bought the paint and he wants to charge 2600.00 for labor only.
i dont want to cheat him just want a fair price.tyke
Just another day in paradise
oh yeah. as a contractor it is my job to compare and also to expect a good job.
thanks for the input. reallytyke
Just another day in paradise
Our painter gives us a price per square foot of floor. The square footage of walls and ceiling can be 4 times that of the floor, or more.
He reviews the plans and I give him specifications and a room finish schedule prior to their bid per SF. If we upgrade or create extras to the work, there are extra charges.
tyke,
I am a building contractor and my wife is a painting subcontractor.
Both of our opinions are the same: Square footage pricing plain and simple will not be accurate.
I have seen some of my wife’s bids and they represent a comprehensive break down of materials, labor, overhead and profit based on the specific plans of the project.
Every task has a line item for materials and labor.
An hour living salary in this part of the country for a master painter is around $20.00 an hour with $ 8.00 an hour for benefits. Payroll burden will be $7.84. For a total labor cost of $35.84 Painting contractors overhead and profit will run around ($20.00) for total labor charges of some $55.84
If you can calculate the materials required to paint your house and could estimate the hours you would know if the price you are receiving is fair.
In your example of $12,000.00 for a total project paint cost some 15% might be materials or $1,800.00 leaving $10,200.00 for painters Labor Overhead & Profit @ $55.84 per hour that means the painter would have 182 hours in which to do all the work.
If the painter does a quality job they would have to hustle to make any money. If their work is substandard then they may do just fine.
Tom
Working for nothing is not getting any cheaper.
Edited 12/4/2005 3:40 pm ET by TomMaynard
Well done.
SQ FT prices never reflect applications desired that are abnormal either . Some GCs want cheap but are not happy with the out come when the homeowner isnt , but he would not have been griping if he was the one who made the money diffference. Which Ive always concluded it was the GC gambling. Too bad the painter gets the heat in those instances.
If that did happen the painter could draw from the contract what was speced , oops, the truth is known.
In line spec pricing as you explain extras cant be added above the contract summary unless its paid for by add contracts. That holds the extras down . But always make them visable and never forgotten. Sure keeps "misunderstandings" to a minimum.
Tim