13/11/2024

Home Scope

Your Home, Your Vision

Cheap Painting Bid Nightmares

Cheap Painting Bid Nightmares

In this day and age, as more and more people are trying to save money, a cheap painting bid can be extremely inviting. The fact is, cheap painting proposals will more than likely cost you double or triple and you’ll even get the bonus of frustrating headaches for long periods of time.

While bidding on painting projects, I constantly see homeowners going through pain and frustration as a result of fly-by-night, con artist painters they hired two or three years ago. These painters claim to have experience but they won’t tell you it was painting grandmas kitchen.

So many things can go wrong with a painting project if a person doesn’t have experience painting. Even many so called experienced painters don’t know what they are doing. It’s too bad that most homeowners don’t really know any better because they don’t have enough knowledge and experience about painting either. Education is the key to getting the job done right.

Painting seems like it should be easy right? Just slap some paint on and you’re good to go right? WRONG!

Let’s say you have a surface that hadn’t been painted in a long time and it’s yellowed. The cheap painter comes in and says, “I can paint that for you for cheap” and you hire them because the price you got was much cheaper than any other bid you got. Bad idea!

The cheap painter throws up the paint in a quick time and you think you got a deal. Plus, you think you have a good painter who is fast. You brag him up to your friends and he paints for them too.

Here’s the problem: Two months later, you lightly bump the surface and the paint comes off exposing the previous old painted surface. You notice the edge of the new paint sticking up and you peel it back only to find out the paint comes off the surface in stringy sheets. This happens mostly on doors, door jams, kitchen walls and bathroom walls.

What went wrong? The first thing that went wrong was you hired Joe Blow-N-Go for cheap without doing your homework and he didn’t know the first thing about preparing a painted surface for a new coat of paint. The old paint was an oil-based paint that had yellowed and needed to be thoroughly scuffed with a 220 grit sandpaper. The surface also needed to be cleaned before applying the new coat of latex paint and the cheap painter you hired didn’t do either of those.

Latex paint doesn’t stick to oil-based paint and since Joe Blow-N-Go’s experience was only painting grandmas kitchen, you suffered the consequences. You got ripped off. Now, all of that new paint must come off. Then, you will need to start over and do the job the right way. Can you imagine having to take all of that new paint off? It’s such a horrible job that people often times live with the mess until they sell the home and pass it on to the next victim.

The other problem is that you’ve already spread the word around about this supposed great painter you found and several of your friends could suffer the same problems.

Here’s another ugly scenario: You need the outside of your home painted and you decide you want it done with the same color as the existing paint. Someone knocks on your door and claims they can paint your house for cheap and that they’ve already done four or five homes in your neighborhood. You talk to one of the other homeowners who used the same guy and they say, “yeah, the guy is cheap and does a good job.”

So, what’s the problem? Three years later, your home looks like it hadn’t been painted in 20 years because, the cheap painter fogged your home with inexpensive watered down paint. Since the new paint was the same color as the old, the fly-by-night painter knew he could lay it on thin and get out of there quick with your money. You just lost all that money and now you have to pay an experienced painter the right price to have the job done right with some quality paint.

A good exterior paint job should last 8 to 12 years depending on the climate. Not two or three.

If you want cheap painting bids, you get what you pay for and more. If you don’t do your homework and educate yourself on painting, you could be in for a real fun time along with throwing away a lot of money.