Hey everyone! I have a painting dilemma. We are buying our first house, it's newly built and the walls have a flat white paint on them. We want to paint the house before we move in. Due to time constraints and a really high wall (about 16 feet at the bottom of the stairs), we're going to hire a painter to paint the upstairs and downstairs main parts of the house (loft, family room, halls and the entry). We've been getting quotes for just the big part and then one for the entire house (bedrooms, bathrooms, den and kitchen included too). We have the money set aside for either way we decide to go.
Today, I went to our house, measured all the bedrooms, bathrooms, the kitchen and den (all the non-main parts of the house) so I could figure out how much paint it would take to do it ourselves. My mom gave me this cool painting book that has a formula to figure out how much paint you need to buy to paint a room. I sat down and figured out that it'll cost almost $700 to get paint to do all the rooms in different colors (Home Depot, Behr paint in 11 different colors). Going off our best quote so far (I'm still waiting on 3 more quotes from painters), that's only about $200 shy of having the painters do the whole house. And that's just the paint, that doesn't include other supplies like painters tape, edging brushes/tools, rollers, drop cloths and such. Okay, so my dilemma is this: I really want to do it myself! Crazy, huh? I have looked forward to painting our house myself (with hubby's help, of course!) from the day with picked the floorplan. Should I go ahead and do it all myself even though it'll probably end up being about the same price? Or should I just have the painters do it? Or should I go somewhere in between and just do my favorite rooms/colors? Time is a big factor too. We aren't sure yet when we'll close on our house (either sometime this week or the last week of October since hubby'll be on a business trip next week), but we're hoping to move in about 5 weeks. I still have lots of projects that I want to get done between now and then (like sew curtains for my boys' bedrooms and some furniture makeovers for the house) and of course, we also need to pack. Please let me know what you think!
6 comments:
Wow, that is a dilemma. I think would hire the painters to do the boring, tedious, and difficult stuff and do the rest myself. Bathrooms, Kitchens and Halls meet those requirements in my opinion. Hope that helps! You must share how it tursn out!
That is hard! We we moved into our house we painted the family room ourselves and really enjoyed doing it. We decided to hire someone to come and paint our kitchen, living room and hallways (we were not looking forward to doing all that taping and painting the vaulted ceilings). We have also painted a few of the bedrooms ourselves. I would suggest keeping the room or rooms that you are most looking forward to painting for yourself and then hire out the rest.
It seems like the most time consuming part of painting was masking everything off. We recently discovered the green "frog" tape at Home Depot and were really pleased with the results. Good luck!
i say let the painters do the work. you will mostly likely get a better job done from them. they will paint the colors you want and then in 5 years you won't be looking at the walls wishing you and david had time to paint the house. the kids will be thankful you are spending more time with them then trying to keep them out of the paint and not touching the walls. plus you have a ton of other projects to finish up and will be happier if you complete those knowing the painters won't do your curtains like you do!
Thanks for stopping by my blog! As for painting - I would hire painters. I did the room you saw myself because I had several weeks before our stuff arrived BUT the hallways up and down and the stairs I hired a painter. All the hassle of taping off, keeping the stairs clean and reaching the hard to reach places wasn't my cup of tea. It needs to be sweet and simple for me to do it. I always forget how much is involved. For your peace and mind - hire someone!
Good luck!
I vote for hiring it out. It'll really reduce the amount of time it takes . . . and there are so many other wonderful things you could be doing with your time . . . playing with kids, organizing, finishing projects, etc.
great before and after photos. I love what you do with your furniture redos. Thanks fo rsharing :)
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