Should You Paint Yourself or Hire Professional Painters?

Make sure you understanding what “Painting” Entails before making a decision to do your own painting for your home renovation, home addition, or New home build.

Painting is easily the most discussed line item when we price out Home Renovations, Home Additions, and Custom Home Builds. This is for good reason, because professional painting is expensive and if you have never hired a professional painting team before you’ve never seen the costs. At the end of the day anyone can wield a paint brush, roller, and painters tape, but being able to is only half the battle. In this article we help explain the “painting” line item in residential construction projects so you can determine if you have the time, patience, and experience to complete your own, or will need to hire a professional through your General Contractor.

What is involved when you “Paint” a home?

What many people fail to realize about painting is it is actually a very labour-intensive process. Not only does the act of painting take a lot of time, but the preparation process also takes a lot longer than people imagine. Not only that but there are more activities involved in the painting process than people think, see below:

• Filling Trim and Drywall – It is often misunderstood that it is the drywallers and trim teams are responsible for cleaning up their messes. This is in part true if there are larger defects in their work, but for the most part the process of making sure that the trim and walls are smooth and free of imperfections falls on the painter. The process of doing this depends on how skilled your General Contractor’s Trim and Drywall/Taping teams are, which would be accounted for by any good painting team, because more time equals more cost.

• Prep Work to cover any finished Flooring/Windows/Doors – Since many professional painters do most or all of their paint coats using paint sprayers, the preparation process needs to be very meticulous in order to prevent any finished areas of the home to be affected by the paint. That is why the first few days are mainly earmarked for prepping and protecting surfaces. This is another labour intensive part of the process for a painting team, and again time is money.

• Painting Drywall, Trim, and Doors – Many times people don’t think about the fact that a painting team is also responsible for not only the walls but also the trim and interior doors being installed. Many times the painter will spray the doors and trim before they are installed, or at the very least try to paint the shoemould/quarteround before it gets installed.

• Caulking of all trim to drywall terminations throughout the home – The caulking of the seams between the baseboard, casing, and jambs is a seldom thought-about task that happens to also fall on the backs of a painter, and adds additional time to the task of “painting”.

Now you can see that “painting” has more to do with prep than just painting, lets progress to some other important topics.

The Amount of Time it takes to Paint a Home

To give you some recent numbers, this is what we have seen for the amount of time it takes to paint a custom home:

• 4000 square feet + finished basement new home build – 4 weeks

• 650 square foot third floor home addition + main/second floor paint touch ups – 1.5 weeks

• 1600 square foot second floor home addition (main and second floors) with basement not affected – 2 weeks

As you can see the amount of time varies, and square footage and duration are not always proportional. There are many other factors involved, including how vacant the home can be during the painting phase, at what point the painting can be completed in the project (to be continued below), and how dedicated the painting team is to the subject property (i.e. competing painting projects).

When should painting be completed for a home renovation, home addition, or new home building project?

The ideal time that painting should be completed is AFTER the completion of the drywalling/mudding and DURING the delivery of the interior doors and trim package. This allows the painters to do less prep work since the flooring is not yet installed, but also gives them access to all of the trim/doors they need to paint on site BEFORE they get installed. This is the most ideal time but it is very theorectical and doesn’t usually happen that way. Many times the painting is done as the tiling is being completed or once the flooring is completed, which presents more prep work for the painting team.

What is the cost for getting a home professionally painted?

For custom home building projects, you can expect to pay anywhere from $8-10 per square foot for a professionally painted home. As you can probably already tell, that adds up when you are looking at building a 2000, 3000, or 4000 square foot home. Note that these amounts usually include the supply of paint, and pricing will vary depending on the factors explained above.

Is it recommended to complete your own painting?

The Do It Yourself Painting question can only be answered with a series of follow-up questions, if you can answer yes to all of them then it is definitely possible, but make sure you are ready for a tedious and time-consuming affair.

• Do you have any experience with painting preparation, painting, and caulking?

• Do you have 40-60 hours per 1000 square feet to allocate for the painting your home?

• Do you have more than one person who is willing to help you paint your home?

The major factor at play with doing your own painting is the overall amount of square footage that needs to be painted. A lot of the time our home renovation clients can get away with doing their own painting, but our larger custom home clients have almost never picked up their own paint brush. Again – Time is Money!

Hiring your own Painter

In the past we have been flexible with our clients and have shifted the painting to be client-managed versus BVM-managed, but this is only recommended if you know someone who can do a good job and also provide some level of discount to complete the work. With painters, time is money so chances are if you are getting too good of a deal the product will show for it so be wary of that fact.

Conclusion

The key takeaway from this article is to show the the reason why professional painting is expensive, why you should not try to hire the cheapest painters, and when you should feel comfortable doing your own painting work. Hopefully this has given you a bit of an appreciation for the subtle art of residential painting, and you can make the right choice for your residential construction project!

About BVM COntracting

BVM Contracting is a full-service General Contractor or Home Builder located in Toronto. We provide home renovation and building services for major home renovations (kitchen renovations, bathroom renovations, basement renovations, full interior renovations, home additions, lot severances, and new home construction). Our goal is to help guide our clients through the process of renovating their home, from concept to completion.

Further than providing General Contracting and Project Management for major home renovations, we also offer value-added services such as renovation financing, renovation rebate consultations and services, building permit and design services, smart home installation services, and real estate investor services.

To learn more about our offering by visiting our services page.