Hello. This is Mike, with Absolute Painting. Just wanted to talk to you about how to choose a painting contractor. Now there are basically five mistakes that homeowners make when choosing a painting contractor. I’m going to talk about those five different things, and how you can avoid them, and make the experience of using a painting contractor to paint your home a good experience.
Here’s mistake number one,
getting only one bid or estimate. Now the problem with this is that if you only get one bid you have no idea if they’re too high or too low, and it doesn’t give you an opportunity to compare their estimate to another company. I recommend getting two or three estimates just to make sure that you’re getting the best estimating service that you can get. Pay attention to how they take care of the estimating process. Are they attentive? Are they trying to educate you?
Are they trying to give you options?
Or are they just walking around and telling you that they can take care of it? Are they giving you specifics? Are they taking measurements? Are they doing all the things that they need to do to let you know that they’re an expert in their field?
The second thing is
not comparing apples to apples. Say you’ve gotten two or three estimates, you need to pay attention to the type of products they use as well as the type of prep work that they’re going to do. All of your written estimates should contain all of this information, and you need to make sure that they’re the same across the board because if they’re not then you may not be getting things that you need to get, or you may be paying for things that you think you’re getting but you’re not.
Now the third mistake is
often taking the lowest price. Painting is an industry that has a wide variety of companies to choose from. There are companies that are experienced, that know the job, and know how to do it well, and then there are guys that have just gotten a truck and a bunch of rollers and paint brushes, and are just trying to do a business. Now if you take the lowest bid then you want to make sure that you’re getting the most value for your job. Typically the lowest bid is not the bid you want to choose. Either they’re going to do a terrible job, or they may do an okay job, but they’re not going to give you the best job that you can get. A lot of times you get what you pay for, and painting is no exception. Why spend hundreds, or even thousands of dollars, and save a couple hundred bucks, and get a job that you’re not ever going to be happy with. So pay attention to those bids.
The fourth problem is
not getting it in writing. If you make the mistake of not getting your estimate in writing and having a signed contract then you’re at the mercy of the contractor. If they don’t finish the job right, and if they don’t do what they’re supposed to do, you have to have something on paper than you can enforce in a court. If it comes down to that, and we hope it doesn’t, but if it does, then you’re going to need a piece of paper with your signature and their signature on it stating exactly what was supposed to be done. This is a simple way to protect yourself when you’re spending a lot of money having your home painted.
The last problem is
paying the contractor too much too soon. If the contractor’s asking for more than 20% of the job down you don’t want to do that. 20% is more than enough to pay for all the paint and materials that it’s going require to finish the job, and most paint jobs don’t take that long anyway, maybe a week or less. So there’s not a lot of time for the contactor to wait in order to get the rest of the money. The problem with paying them too much too soon is that you lower the incentive for them to do the job right and get it done quickly. If you wait until you make final payment you want to be perfectly satisfied with the job. You want to make sure that the job is done according to your satisfaction, and you want to make sure that the contractor understands that you’re not going to be writing that final check until you’re completely satisfied with the job.
Now avoiding these five mistakes won’t always fix every problem you’re going to have when you choose a painting contractor, but it will sure help a lot. Now, if you want to use a company that will do things right the first time and take care of you from the beginning of the process when we estimate the job to the end of the process when we take you through a seven step walk through then call Absolute Painting. We’d be more than happy to take care of your needs. This is Mike Balding with Absolute Painting, until next time, have a great day.
