The Best Way to Receive a House Painting Estimate
For an accurate house painting estimate, seeing the space to be painted is crucial
There are many ways of assessing a painting estimate, but when it all comes down to the real cost of the work performed, the meat of the cost will be in the details. It’s very difficult to provide a real job cost with only the square footage of a home. Square footage might be useful in a painting estimate for painting ceilings but again without knowing many other details this piece of info is vague at best. This can be illustrated quite simply. Imagine a 4,000 square foot area, this can be represented as a large gymnasium like box, alternatively this space can be filled with many walls, bulkheads, pipes or other detailed structures as is typical of most homes. Both of these examples have no mention of how high the ceilings are and thus how much area actually needs to be painted. Typically these details are the items that will require a lot of time, and understanding the height of ceilings is also an important aspect. As you can see it can be difficult to truly provide an accurate painting estimate that’s fair for both the contractor and customer.
In some situations it’s possible to provide a very basic painting estimate with a few details but this price wouldn’t be given and shouldn’t be received with a lot of confidence. And again, if the price is to be fair to both customer and contractor in the end the painting contractor will still have to visit the space to deliver a fair and final painting estimate. Obviously the more details communicated between the customer and the painting contractor the better a price can be worked out via communication but the amount of time to work out all the minor details would most likely far out weigh a simple visit to the project site for a proper proper painting estimate.
Typically the sort of painting estimates that can be given without seeing the space and having a fairly confident painting cost estimate are when an empty condominium needs to be painted. The vast majority of these are very similar in terms of size and dimension, there are also usually no surprises in terms of details of work. However, painting houses on the other-hand it’s very hard to give a confident painting estimate without actually seeing the house, if you are a person looking to receive a paint estimate I would caution against having too much confidence in an over the phone or over the internet painting estimate consultation. Either you might end up being over-charged or the contractor would be under-paid and chances are the work quality would suffer.
So you get a painting estimate that isn’t a very good example of what you’re going to be paying? Who cares? You’ll just figure out the real price down the road, you’re just shopping anyhow right?
Let’s look at a potential problem with this, imagine you receive a few rough ‘ballpark’ painting estimates and they come in at $1500, $1600 and $1800 based on the details you provide the painting contractors and what you assess the paint job to require. Time passes and you decide now is a good time to get that painting done, you call up your favoured painting contractor and they tell you they’ll need to do a proper painting estimate. You think, “No problem, it’ll probably be in the price range of the painting estimates, no more than $2000 worst case.”
Well the painting contractor comes and makes his conducts his house painting estimate, you missed a few details and the painting contractor has made a proper full assessment of the job, considered all necessary painting preparation work required and other painting details. Now his painting estimate comes in at $2600 nearly $1000 more than the rough estimate. You’re floored and think this guy is trying to rip you off! In reality you’ve anchored the price in your mind at around $1500 to $1800 this means you’ve already created a mental price-tag for the job which has no bearing on the reality of the cost of the painting work. This is one potential trouble with receiving rough estimates, when the comes down to it the cost will reflect the work required and will have no bearing on any rough painting estimates you’ve received over the phone.
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