House painting estimate

[N80]

I'm having my 80 year old home remodeled. Almost complete. Will finish on time and on budget. Very satisfied with my contractor: expensive but worth it. He only does one job at a time. The cost for interior painting blew my mind but every inch, walls, ceilings, windows, molding, stair rails, stair risers, new deck, etc had to be done. The painter was excellent and it took him 3 months so I can understand the expense.

Anyway, the exterior needs to be painted soon if not now. The house is brick except for front of second floor which is wood siding. It is two story, three on the back with walk-in basement. About 2500 sq ft interior dimension. There are probably 18 old fashioned wood windows with divided lights and 4 pairs of shutters across the front. The estimate from the contractor is $8200. Same painter that did the interior.

Seems high to me. But, there is a lot of trim, the back is three stories up, the painter is good, it includes scraping, pressure washing and repair of about 10 cracked window panes. We are getting additional estimates soon. But does this sound reasonable to you guys?

 

[kenmac]

I'm no painted. But, seems high to me.I would see what the other estimates are b-4 agreeing to an 8 k paint job

 

[Lloyd_E]

Sound about right. Depends on the type of paint oil vs latex, number of coats, prep work
and colour change. Just to repair the windows will take time...

Lloyd

 

[OKnewguy]

Sound cheap if the painter is following the new epa lead guide lines. These guide lines easily add 30% or more. When you get bids, you need to make sure that the contractors are using the regulations and are certified. If some of them are not you will not be comparing apples to apples. I do general handyman stuff and fill in with a painter contractor when things are slow for me. I have chosen it is not worth it for me to take on jobs that require me to follow the guidelines (there is substantial cash outlay for hepa vacs, negative air systems etc) but the contractor I work with has been certified. He does a lot of historical homes around the capital district in OKC, and all of these were built in the late 1800's to 1930's.
The general consensus on the epa guidelines are something like this.
Interior.
any 6 square foot area disturbed per room the guidelines must be followed.
Exterior
any area over 20 square foot disturbed the guidelines must be followed.

You can do a simple paint over the existing surfaces, but this means no scrapping or sanding. Once you scrape or sand you must follow the guidelines.
Failure to follow the regulations is a $30K something fine per occurrence!
BTW, these regulations do not apply to a diy homeowner.
These regs, are almost like asbestos abatement, Dave

 

[JDgreen227]

I'm having my 80 year old home remodeled. Almost complete. Will finish on time and on budget. Very satisfied with my contractor: expensive but worth it. He only does one job at a time. The cost for interior painting blew my mind but every inch, walls, ceilings, windows, molding, stair rails, stair risers, new deck, etc had to be done. The painter was excellent and it took him 3 months so I can understand the expense.

Anyway, the exterior needs to be painted soon if not now. The house is brick except for front of second floor which is wood siding. It is two story, three on the back with walk-in basement. About 2500 sq ft interior dimension. There are probably 18 old fashioned wood windows with divided lights and 4 pairs of shutters across the front. The estimate from the contractor is $8200. Same painter that did the interior.

Seems high to me. But, there is a lot of trim, the back is three stories up, the painter is good, it includes scraping, pressure washing and repair of about 10 cracked window panes. We are getting additional estimates soon. But does this sound reasonable to you guys?

Do I interpret this as meaning you are having the BRICK itself painted? Or just the siding, windows, trim, etc?

 

[N80]

No, not painting the brick. Just trim, windows and the wood siding on the second floor front.

We decided to skip the painting for now. Even if we got an estimate for half that price, we're pretty much tapped out right now anyway. The renovation pretty much cost the same as what we paid for the house.

 

[jinman]

George, I understand your waiting to get a job done because of cash available. I am just having some improvement work done on my house too. I'm adding a driveway pad, re-siding one end of my house where the sun brutalized my cedar siding, and adding a ground floor bathroom attachment. We don't have a lot of choice for contractors out here in the country. You can find two or three good ones and most of the others are fly-by-night. When the contractor brought me his estimate, the driveway and siding prices seemed okay, but I thought the room addition was a bit high. I just told him that the price seemed almost $2000 more than I had expected and wondered if he could explain those costs. As we talked, I pointed out his price was about $160 per foot on the addition and I found that much too high. As it turns out, when he started describing his costs and how he had figured the prices, it became obvious that he was using figures based on tearing out an old bathroom and then doing a complete refurb. He also was figuring all the bath furnishings would be purchased by him and installed. When I mentioned that this would be a new build addon with easy access to plumbing and electrical already available. Even framing for the door would be easier because we would use an existing tall window and not have to put in a header, just a frame and jamb. I was also going to buy the tub, vanity, commode, and cabinetry. Even roofing would be easy because there is a deck above where deck boards can be removed to make roofing easier from above, no ladders/scaffold required. To make a long story short, he quickly said his estimate may have been as much as $3000 high and it would be more like $9000 plus or minus $500.:thumbsup: I had figured $10k in the beginning.

Anyhow, I would approach these issues directly and respectfully with the contractor. You know he is good. Let him tell you why the job costs so much. Maybe you could even offer to rent him a manlift for the high work and save him having to build scaffolds and use long ladders. These are all just ideas, but the honest, straight-forward approach in a dignified manner sure worked for me.

 

[N80]

Good points Jim. This guy has been easy to work with and is pretty straight forward so I think that approach would work. But, at this point I'm going to let it go and try to save up some money to have this job done in the fall. There have been no surprise additional expenses so far. We have added on some stuff here and there which has raised the total cost but that was our choice. The biggest of those was a new roof. That kind of took us to the edge of our budget.

 

[JDgreen227]

Good points Jim. This guy has been easy to work with and is pretty straight forward so I think that approach would work. But, at this point I'm going to let it go and try to save up some money to have this job done in the fall. There have been no surprise additional expenses so far. We have added on some stuff here and there which has raised the total cost but that was our choice. The biggest of those was a new roof. That kind of took us to the edge of our budget.

I have had a fair number of houses, and quite a few outbuildings...and now that I'm older and hopefully smarter, if it came down to choosing to spend money on a new roof or ANY other project, I'd choose the roof job FIRST.

My dad loved to say "Your roof IS your house". It's foolish to cut corners there...yes, I learned the hard way.

 

[Pops15]

Sound cheap if the painter is following the new epa lead guide lines. These guide lines easily add 30% or more. When you get bids, you need to make sure that the contractors are using the regulations and are certified. If some of them are not you will not be comparing apples to apples. I do general handyman stuff and fill in with a painter contractor when things are slow for me. I have chosen it is not worth it for me to take on jobs that require me to follow the guidelines (there is substantial cash outlay for hepa vacs, negative air systems etc) but the contractor I work with has been certified. He does a lot of historical homes around the capital district in OKC, and all of these were built in the late 1800's to 1930's.
The general consensus on the epa guidelines are something like this.
Interior.
any 6 square foot area disturbed per room the guidelines must be followed.
Exterior
any area over 20 square foot disturbed the guidelines must be followed.

You can do a simple paint over the existing surfaces, but this means no scrapping or sanding. Once you scrape or sand you must follow the guidelines.
Failure to follow the regulations is a $30K something fine per occurrence!
BTW, these regulations do not apply to a diy homeowner.
These regs, are almost like asbestos abatement, Dave

You hit the nail on the head! The US EPA RRP regs have driven prices through the roof. There are still a lot of contractors that are not following the regs. Some of them on this forum have told me they won't follow the rules! With fines running $37500 per violation per day it will ruin their day when they get caught.
I recently bid a job where the costs to comply with the EPA regs was over $6700. That was just the cost of complying with the ridiculous EPA regulations. There was no benefit whatsoever for the home owner.

Since the OP said there would be scraping involved I'll mention some of the EPA mandated work procedures the painting contractor would have to follow.
Visqueen has to be placed on the ground. The visqueen has to be taped (yeah right) to the foundation. The visqueen has to extend past the work area on each side and 10' out from the house. You have bushes, shrubs, flowers? Yep, they'll get covered with visqueen and will likely burn up if its sunny out. A "curb" has to be built to keep any paint scrapings or dust from blowing off the visqueen. Basically a 2X4 form has to be run around the perimeter, the visqueen lapped over the top, and a lath nailed on to hold the visqueen in place. A wind barrier would have to be set up. That usually means stack scaffold with tarps or visqueen fastened to it. 20' out a barrier needs to be set up. That could be re-bar stakes with caution tape. A hepa vac needs to be used with any sander (EPA was trying to make this mandatory for NON lead based paint as well!!!!!). All paint chips/dust have to be cleaned up off the visqueen. All tools including ladders and scaffold have to be wiped down with baby wipes. The visqeen has to be put in garbage bags and sealed in a specific manner. Almost forgot ...Any paint chips on the ground prior to putting the visqueen down have to be vacuumed up!
All windows and doors within a certain distance of the work area need to have a barrier (caution tape). There's signage that needs to be posted, paperwork that needs to be done. Workers need to be certified. The contractor needs to be licensed by the US EPA. The rules really get crazy for inside work. There's more, but I'm sure you get the idea.
The rules do not apply to home owners that are working on houses they live in. If you have rentals you have to be licensed and follow the regs just like a contractor! This has all been in affect since April 22, 2010.
Oh yeah, power washing is included in the regs. I forget the specifics but as I recall you have to capture the run off (ALL of it), filter it, and pour it down a drain.

At $8200 I suspect the OP's contractor was NOT going to follow the EPA regs.

The EPA has a snitch line where home owners can turn in their contractors for not following the rules. If the EPA collects any fines, the snitch gets a cut of the proceeds. The instructor of the certification class I took said a contractor in his town had 17 complaints on the snitch line in one week! None were placed by customers. All were placed by other contractors.