Estimating Your Painting Job Costs

I get emails all the time asking me about estimating paint jobs. People are looking for methods or systems to estimate painting jobs. This is good because it shows that painters are aware of their faults when it comes to estimating.

After going through a few years of "winging it" or semi-guesstimating paint jobs, and losing money a few too many times, I decided to get serious about my estimating. One thing to get rid of in your mind is the square foot of floor space way of estimating, which is just guestimating with a different name. An obvious thing would be to compare two rooms, one with 12 foot high ceilings with crown molding, chair rail, and 8 French doors. And another room with 8 foot ceilings and 1 flush door. Say both are 16x16, there is no way that they could be done in the same amount of time and material, I know these are obviously different paint jobs, but even on painting jobs with lesser differences there are still differences, and I have seen painters blow through an estimate in minutes, where it took me ½ hour. That other painter's estimate might be lower and he might get the job, and he also could lose money. Guestimating only hurts the paint estimator, stop doing it.

Imagination, try picturing in your mind the process, first you need to unload the truck. How long does that take? Then setup the first area either a room or a starting point on the exterior. How long did that take? Let's assume that you are doing an interior. First you move what you need to. How long? Then you drop out the room. How long? Then you remove all the switch plates and everything else that is necessary. How long? Then you prep the room fixing the nail pops, cracks and whatever else. How long? If you have been doing this for a while you know that sometimes the preliminary work takes longer than the painting.

Now the part comes to actually apply paint, first coat, then the second one, and the second coat really is a lot less because of all the work that had to be done with the first coat. How long does it take for your crew to paint 100 square feet of wall after all the setup, removing, repairing has been done?

Now what? Are you done? No? Start cleaning up. How long does that take? Replace everything. How long? Now fold the drops and put everything back. How long?

And I almost forgot. How much time did you put into getting this job? Did you estimate any other jobs? How much time did that take? Did you run to the store? How many times? How much fuel?

Do you and your crew work 8 hours each day? I doubt it. The average is 6.5. Think about what you are estimating my friend. This is only the tip of the iceberg.

Source : Ezinearticles