I have written a book about the Home Construction business with an emphasis on working with General Contactors and Sub-Contractors—including valuable “rules of the road” advice for dealing with these folks. This book is not a book about “do it yourself-DIY” projects.
My book deals in depth with the sub specialties of the Home Construction business including my personal area of expertise–Painting and Drywall Issues.
The other trades I discuss in some detail are:
Carpentry
Electrical
Plumbing
HVAC (Heating Ventilation, Air conditioning)
Handymen
Home Inspections.
The book can only be purchased online in an e-version. At this time, there is no physical copy of my book in paperback or hard cover.
I will be presenting the entire book in this blog section of my web site in smaller parts, over time.
The first section to be presented pertains to Painting and Drywall issues.
Here are the topics that will be coming:
A. Bang for the buck: painting
B. Latex paint vs. oil-based paint
C. Visit a Paint store before hiring a paint contractor
D. What paint sheens are there and which one is the
best to use?
E. How do I select the right paint color for my house?
F. Don’t let the paint contractor pick the paint
quality—you do it.
G. How can a painter cut corners or even cheat you
H. How to keep the painter from using cheap paint on
your job
I. What quality paint do I need for my house?
J. What is the best way to get paint matched?
Bang for the buck:
I said earlier that a great way to save money when painting the inside of a house is to skip painting the ceilings and the wood trim. Since ceilings are usually white, they will go with any color scheme. Besides, most times ceilings are in good shape and do not need any unnecessary attention. If the ceiling is not white but say a cream color and therefore does not go with the new color scheme, you might have to repaint. This is usually not the case.
Wood trim such as baseboards, crown molding, doors, and door jams can be washed thoroughly and will look fine. More often than not wood trim does not need to be repainted. Instead of painting all of the wood trim, a little bit of strategic touch up would fix any problematic areas.
On a typical two-thousand square foot house the savings when not painting the ceilings can be around $1000, and $5000 when not painting the wood trim! Imagine all the other things you could do with all the money you saved.
I have had to develop my thoughts around “bang for the buck-painting” because I frequently work with new home buyers, whether they are folks purchasing a newly built home or an existing home.
By the time my customers get around to thinking about painting they have spent most of their remodeling money on things that had to be done: updating appliances, repairing the roof, fixing the foundation, etc. For that reason, I have had to develop concrete ways people can make their homes look good given a very tight budget.
It might seem counterintuitive but I work very hard to save my customers money by not painting things that really do not need it. Doing great work at reasonable prices is the best way to make new friends fast. I know that new friends will probably call me back in the future when they need more painting done. So, I say I am in the friends business, because making and keeping friends is the best way to run a long-term business. As a customer, you should strive to find people with whom you would like to be business friends.
The other reason you might have to repaint a ceiling is that there has been clearly visible damage done to the ceiling. Damage to a ceiling might come from cracks that have come from a moving foundation, but more often than not ceiling damage comes from water damage. Most water damage is a result of either a leaking roof or a water overflow from a second-floor bathroom. You will need to repaint the ceiling if there is damage, but 80% of the time I have found that there is no serious damage and that painting it is not necessary, also with the flooring installation, you will need a proper system as if you decide to use hardwood it might have more possible damage.
Another major painting task that can frequently be skipped is re-painting the wood trim around your house. For a painter or carpenter, wood trim typically means baseboards, crown molding, door jams, and door trim and doors. My customers often buy an older house and think that all of the trim automatically needs to be painted. The problem with re-painting trim is that it generally costs a lot of money, relatively speaking. Painting trim is time consuming and needs to be done with care and precision, so it is labor intensive. And there is a great deal of trim throughout a house when you start adding it up.
Rather than assuming that the house trim has to be painted, I look it over to see if it is in really bad shape. Most of the time it is not. I then advise washing the trim (called “deep cleaning”) before I advise a homeowner to paint it. Frequently, most trim around a house has never been washed, so just doing this one cleaning step can eliminate the need for expensive painting. Remember, I am in the friends business as much as I am in the painting business: saving my customers money means making new friends; making new friends means staying in business.
The final trick to saving money is to paint only the trim that might really need it.
To do this, I get a paint match of the existing trim by taking a chip from the trim in a customer’s house to a paint store and having a custom match done from the existing color. Once an accurate color paint match has been created, I can go around a customer’s house and surgically paint only those parts of the trim in each room that really needs it.
To sum up, in older houses that are newly purchased I frequently paint all of the walls, skip painting all of the ceilings that can reasonably be skipped, and repaint only the wood trim that my customers and I think absolutely needs it after a thorough cleaning has been done. And I can tell you that on even a limited painting budget, I can dramatically turn a house around and give it a genuine wow factor. I do this type of total “bang for the buck” work at least once a week.
