House Painting Contractors
Last summer the architectural committee of our home owners association came by to inspect our house and they informed us that we needed to paint the exterior of our home. I had not really noticed, but a close inspection revealed all kinds of chips and cracks, and little bubbles that would soon become cracks and chips. My wife and I are in our sixties and since our house is a two-story model with extra high gables, we decided that we definitely needed to find some house painting contractors to do the work.
Let me say this about house painting contractors: You must be very specific about what you want. Since we live on a very tight budget, we called several different companies to come out and give us estimate. All I said when the different guys arrived was basically tell me how much it would cost to paint my house. Well, after about a week we received all of the estimates and we were very shocked and confused by the dramatic discrepancies in cost estimates.
The fact that most of the estimates came with only a very broad description of the work to be done added to our confusion. So I called each contractor back and asked for a more detailed description of the work, materials, timeframe, etc. Boy, was I surprised by the variety of opinions and procedures from each different company.
The painting contractor with the lowest bid seemed like a super nice and honest guy until I demanded further inquiry into what he was planning to do. Turns out he was going to scrape and prime just the obvious areas and just paint over the existing paint. He was not even going to remove the guttering or all of those little boxes and wires running around houses that most of us do not even know what they are. He was just going to either paint over them or around them.
And do not think that the highest bidder will employ better techniques or materials. When I asked the guy with the most expensive bid about his methods and plans I found out he was not going to remove any of the exterior wiring, boxes, etc., and the paint he was planning to use was not even as long-lasting as the paint proposed by the low bidder. A few of the in-between guys insisted on using the absolute best paint available, but then they planned to cut corners in many other areas.
Ultimately, we decided on a house painting contractor who was going to use good-quality paint, scrape and prime the whole house, remove and then reinstall all of the exterior accoutrements – but would take longer than all the rest to finish the job. He was a full ten days painting our home but when it was done it looked phenomenal. We were so glad we did all that tedious research because it definitely paid off.
Internet Guru Owen Walcher lives in Guadalajara, Jalisco Mexico. He writes about many topics including home and garden, vacation travel, security, professional services and other topics of interest.
