painting the whole house interior

[AFurryReptile]

did you go at it all day, how long did it take you, and how many people?

are any brands at the big box stores perfectly fine? It's $30/gal we saw yesterday. We're doing light colors, as darker takes an extra coat they say.

Between 2-3 guys, three full weekends, with a couple of evenings throughout the week. I used Behr paint from the Home Depot - it was some paint AND primer stuff, and it worked really well. Most rooms only needed a single coat. Granted, I was painting on top of old paint, so ymmv.

 

[Aharami]

anyone have thoughts on buying/renting a sprayer for doing something like this? Seems like with an empty house it would speed things up quite a bit.

I bought a Graco HVLP sprayer because I thought it would be faster. But I found that rolling paint is faster, at least for me. Plus, with a sprayer, you have to do a lot more prep work to reduce overspray

 

[bignateyk]

TIL that people pay other people to paint their house.

 

[Anubis]

shit we painted the exterior of a 4k sqft house for that much, and that included 7 colors + scraping and priming

just paint it yourself, go room by room, you can do 1 every 2 days if you paint after work

 

[highland145]

TIL that people pay other people to paint their house.

I hate painting. Going to pay to have the trim painted in the dining room. Maybe the walls/ceiling if the $$ is right.

 

[bignateyk]

I hate painting. Going to pay to have the trim painted in the dining room. Maybe the walls/ceiling if the $$ is right.

Painting is the easiest thing ever. The only thing that sucks about it is taping. Having to tape a 2500sq foot house would really suck a big one. This is probably why my dad always made me do all the taping when he painted.

 

[MotionMan]

Are you in LI? Drive to the local pickup for the illegal labor, grab as many as you can fit in your vehicle/roof/trunk, and pay them whatever the going rate is ($60/day plus lunch?) and let them hammer it out. You're looking at $1500/wk with 5 guys. Shouldn't take that much time though unless you have some colors that require many coats.

Around here, there are illegals that hang around the paint stores (in white paint clothes). I could be assuming, but I would think that those guys know how to paint. The guys who hang around Home Depot and the like are more likely to just be labor or have more specialized skills. Some of the paint store guys appear to have some equipment, too.

Make sure you grab at least one guy who speaks English well enough for you to communicate. Pay him a couple extra bucks to be the foreman, even if you only have 2 guys. Take your time picking that guy.

Don't leave. Watch every step of the way and be in charge of your own quality control (though I have found that most of those guys actually want to do a good job for you so you will use them again).

MotionMan

 

[jwebj]

I bought a Graco HVLP sprayer because I thought it would be faster. But I found that rolling paint is faster, at least for me. Plus, with a sprayer, you have to do a lot more prep work to reduce overspray

I borrowed a airless sprayer and used the power roller attachment when i moved. It was great for priming all the rooms at the same time, but cleanup was a pain so it didn't work well for actually painting the rooms since they were all different colors.
The paint rollers with a reservoir in the handle worked ok for painting a single room.

 

[bignateyk]

Around here, there are illegals that hang around the paint stores (in white paint clothes). I could be assuming, but I would think that those guys know how to paint. The guys who hang around Home Depot and the like are more likely to just be labor or have more specialized skills. Some of the paint store guys appear to have some equipment, too.

Make sure you grab at least one guy who speaks English well enough for you to communicate. Pay him a couple extra bucks to be the foreman, even if you only have 2 guys. Take your time picking that guy.

Don't leave. Watch every step of the way and be in charge of your own quality control (though I have found that most of those guys actually want to do a good job for you so you will use them again).

MotionMan

If you have to stand there and babysit/supervise them the whole time, why not just do it yourself? It's not like painting is difficult.

 

[Scotteq]

I painted my own house. Though it is a Ranch, so it's not like I had to arrange for scaffolding or anything like that. Just needed a platform to stand on so I could get under the eaves. The act of painting is not hard. What matters is that you take the time with the Prep work: Scraping, sanding, and masking off the trim.

 

[IndyColtsFan]

New dormer with most of the 1st floor re-done with new sheetrock/spackle/tape. So basically we have ~2500sqft of house to paint. I'm getting wind that this will cost over $10k (estimate to come). WTF... nobody filled us in on this ridiculous expense. I know it's probably easier said than done, but are we crazy for thinking we could save some money here and at least do the walls on our own, have them do the ceilings, etc.? Every room is empty of furniture and flooring at the moment... couldn't be scripted any better... probably just time-consuming, considering it would take 3 guys about 2 weeks. So... prime coat, 2 paint coats, not difficult, is it?

$10K is ridiculous. My house is about 2700/2800 sq. ft and we had all of the interior painted (except a couple of rooms) and that included 2 coats of paint on each wall (high quality Sherwin Williams paint too) AND ceiling paint for $2100. There was also a deep stairwell involved too.

And 3 guys taking 2 weeks to do that job? No way. It took 2 guys about 3 days to do my entire place and I had furniture and stuff they had to move around.

 

[highland145]

Painting is the easiest thing ever. The only thing that sucks about it is taping. Having to tape a 2500sq foot house would really suck a big one. This is probably why my dad always made me do all the taping when he painted.

And what Scott said, scraping, sanding.....and painting trim.

Damn house is 75 years old with lead paint trim. Haven't found a sure fire way to get paint to adhere for the long run.

Maybe I should rip it out and toss it in the land fill.:ninja:

 

[highland145]

I borrowed a airless sprayer and used the power roller attachment when i moved. It was great for priming all the rooms at the same time, but cleanup was a pain so it didn't work well for actually painting the rooms since they were all different colors.

X100. Took it back. The home depot lady didn't look happy.

 

[edro]

I think the moral of the story is to get at least 3 quotes.

 

[highland145]

I think the moral of the story is to get at least 3 quotes.

And one Mexican that speaks english.

 

[MotionMan]

If you have to stand there and babysit/supervise them the whole time, why not just do it yourself? It's not like painting is difficult.

Because, for some people, painting is difficult. Not everyone has a perfect back (or the skill or patience to do painting right).

Also, I can be doing other work that I get paid much more per hour than the laborers are being paid while still checking in with the laborers every so often.

MotionMan

 

[vi edit]

That including trim too? That's what really sucks up time. For reference, my recent build was about 3200 sq/ft of living space of which 1/2 was an easy to paint 8' or 9' ceiling. The rest was a 25' entry way, a bedroom with a 14' vaulted ceiling, and another awkward vaulted ceiling in an upstairs room. My contractor was going to charge me $4000 for labor and materials on the wall painting. Trim painting including trim, doors, and caulking all baseboards and door/window jams was another $4000. So my house was $8000 for a full paint & trim job.

We did everything ourselves. I had close to $3000 in paint alone. Plus a $400 sprayer. And it took my wife and I almost 2 full weeks to do everything...and some of the trim still isn't caulked yet.

One or two rooms is one thing...trying to take on 10,000 sq/ft of priming, two layers of paint, and then trim work is a completely different thing. It's like going from running a 5k to running a marathon.

 

[vi edit]

I bought a Graco HVLP sprayer because I thought it would be faster. But I found that rolling paint is faster, at least for me. Plus, with a sprayer, you have to do a lot more prep work to reduce overspray

I bought a Milwaukee sprayer from HD for under $400.
http://www.milwaukeetool.com/tools/...choices/airless-finish-paint-sprayer/M4910-20

It excelled for spraying primer in a new construction home with no flooring down. Once I got past that point it lost it's utility for wall painting. It was just too much hassle, and doubly so if you have a lot of different colors.

Where it worked well was spraying my doors. I set up a shop in the basement and went to town with it. The key I found was humidity. You *can't* spray in high humidity. It just doesn't dry fast enough and you'll get runs. The drier the air the better off you are. And paint type makes a huge difference too. I used a flat black paint for my theatre room door and it looks like it was painted in a factory. It was flawless. The white "trim paint" that I used for the doors was Dutch Boy mix that was very difficult to get down right. I spent a lot of time sanding down my screw ups and repspraying. Most doors look decent, but a couple of them are pretty bad. I really need to take them down and sand and respray. They are still better than the lines you get even using a foam roller though.

The sprayer also plowed through 600 feet of quarter round in about 30 seconds a pass. Seriously...it took like 4 minutes of actual "painting" time to paint that stuff.

 

[sdifox]

spray paint is a bad idea...

People usually just grab a few buddies and just paint.

Just watch some youtube video and that is all you need. practice makes perfect.

Do get ceiling paint that go on with one colour and dry white.

the 2500 sqft is the floor or the area of the walls you have to paint?
my house is about 2800 and we painted it ourselves. with helps from relatives of course.

 

[BurnItDwn]

Dude, painting isn't really bad and it doesn't take that long.... If you're gonna be doing the whole house I'd say maybe it's worth getting an airless paint sprayer, otherwise, just use normal rollers and get extensions for them for the ceilings.

 

[rh71]

That including trim too? That's what really sucks up time. For reference, my recent build was about 3200 sq/ft of living space of which 1/2 was an easy to paint 8' or 9' ceiling. The rest was a 25' entry way, a bedroom with a 14' vaulted ceiling, and another awkward vaulted ceiling in an upstairs room. My contractor was going to charge me $4000 for labor and materials on the wall painting. Trim painting including trim, doors, and caulking all baseboards and door/window jams was another $4000. So my house was $8000 for a full paint & trim job.

We did everything ourselves. I had close to $3000 in paint alone. Plus a $400 sprayer. And it took my wife and I almost 2 full weeks to do everything...and some of the trim still isn't caulked yet.

One or two rooms is one thing...trying to take on 10,000 sq/ft of priming, two layers of paint, and then trim work is a completely different thing. It's like going from running a 5k to running a marathon.

That sounds more like it, and crazy to do at the same time. The sq footage was for the floor space. Just to give an idea of how many rooms... technically, all of the great room, kitchen, dining room, den, office, foyer, and hall for the 1st floor. Upstairs is 3 regular bedrooms, 2 baths (1 with vaulted ceiling), and the master bed with a vaulted 11' ceiling. Stairway with window is going to be impossible to reach for us. All will have trim, including all new doors.

Now that I type all that out, it seems like I'll be in over my head... maybe I'll just pay for the ceiling/trim work and do the regular walls ourselves - depends on cost and I'll be getting more estimates in the next couple days.

 

[MotionMan]

Dude, painting isn't really bad and it doesn't take that long.... If you're gonna be doing the whole house I'd say maybe it's worth getting an airless paint sprayer, otherwise, just use normal rollers and get extensions for them for the ceilings.

Try doing it with a bad back.

MotionMan

 

[IndyColtsFan]

Dude, painting isn't really bad and it doesn't take that long....

There is no way on earth I could've done it as well or as quickly as the guys I hired. I also would've had to mask everything, whereas these guys masked nothing and did an amazing job in 3 days.

 

[Aharami]

I bought a Milwaukee sprayer from HD for under $400.
http://www.milwaukeetool.com/tools/...choices/airless-finish-paint-sprayer/M4910-20

It excelled for spraying primer in a new construction home with no flooring down. Once I got past that point it lost it's utility for wall painting. It was just too much hassle, and doubly so if you have a lot of different colors.

Where it worked well was spraying my doors. I set up a shop in the basement and went to town with it. The key I found was humidity. You *can't* spray in high humidity. It just doesn't dry fast enough and you'll get runs. The drier the air the better off you are. And paint type makes a huge difference too. I used a flat black paint for my theatre room door and it looks like it was painted in a factory. It was flawless. The white "trim paint" that I used for the doors was Dutch Boy mix that was very difficult to get down right. I spent a lot of time sanding down my screw ups and repspraying. Most doors look decent, but a couple of them are pretty bad. I really need to take them down and sand and respray. They are still better than the lines you get even using a foam roller though.

The sprayer also plowed through 600 feet of quarter round in about 30 seconds a pass. Seriously...it took like 4 minutes of actual "painting" time to paint that stuff.

I got a much cheaper sprayer - Graco 2900 - to spray my projector screen. Since I'd already bought it, I thought I'd use it for the rest of my basement. But the prep work made it a pain, and I ended up rolling the paint. But I agree with you - priming stage would have been a LOT faster with the sprayer. Wish I had the sprayer when I was priming and painting the ceilings (I HATE painting ceilings). And it made painting doors much easier. Anything odd shaped is where I use the sprayer. But I still prefer to roll on walls.

 

[Vette73]

Yea I used a sprayer to do the primer and then my ceiling paint. But the rest was by hand.

Even then I did the full basement by hand as the sprayer did not save any real time once you factor in the cleaning and mess it made.