Choosing A Painter

July 9, 2020 2:20 PM

Should I hire a licensed Painter or General Contractor to Paint my house?

We are in the process of hiring someone to paint the exterior of our house. We got several bids and narrowed it down to two candidates. The first is someone who has painted houses for many years. I found him online. Seems like a very honest guy who is passionate about doing a good job. Also he has a ton of outstanding and what appear to be very real reviews online. The way people talk about him...you can tell that customers are extremely pleased with his work and work ethic. Now the other person is a general contractor who does a lot of painting. It happens that this particular person lives in my neighborhood. Another neighbor who has used him for bathroom updates said he does painting and I should ask him if he would give me an estimate. He was very responsive and came right over to look at my house. Seems like a very nice man and one of the houses in the neighborhood that he painted came out really nice. On the flip side another house he did came out average. But both houses are decent. The guy who lives in my neighborhood is giving me a rate that is $600 cheaper then the other guy. And FYI I didn't tell him what the other guy's estimate was, so he didn't just lower his price. My thoughts are that on the one hand a general contractor might come in handy should something else arise that a painter might not be able to fix. On the other hand I'm not sure what would complicate things that the painter can't handle. The house needs a lot of prep work. I think I'm leaning towards to the guy with all the great reviews. The guy in the neighborhood has virtually no online presence or reviews. The only thing I found online was that he is licensed. Not that this means he's not good or reputable. And he seems very nice and honest as well. Plus he could come in handy for more work on my house in the future. My wife seems to think we should go with the neighborhood guy mainly because he's cheaper. She also says that since he lives right around the block he'll probably wanna do a good job since we know where he lives, haha. But she says she's ok with either one and it's my choice. I feel like we're already spending thousands...what's another $600, lol. But it's a tough call. Any thoughts or opinions here would be helpful! Who would you go with and why?

posted by ljs30 to Home & Garden (9 answers total)

I would tend to go with the painter because the contractor's work is only going to be as good as whoever he can find to do the job at that moment.
posted by bonobothegreat at 2:27 PM on July 9, 2020 [8 favorites]

For specialty trades (painting, tile, and electricity in particular) I would always recommend someone who does that one thing all day every day over someone who does a whole gamut of GC work. In fact, nearly every GC I’ve ever met vastly prefers to sub contract the trades out if they can. So when you pay a GC for painting you might be paying overhead on what they are paying the specialist. Now, could the GC is bringing in a “journeyman” painter and that explains the lower rate.

However you slice it. paint is so so easy to be sloppy with. I’d get a pro painter through word of mouth.
posted by bilabial at 2:29 PM on July 9, 2020 [1 favorite]

And yes, many GCs will hire a painter whose work they’ve never seen before.

Ask around among your friends, who hired a painter and especially liked the outcome, their process, etc. You’ll hear about who dragged the job out because they got a better paying gig, and who wore their muddy boots all over the carpet with no shoe covers.
posted by bilabial at 2:30 PM on July 9, 2020 [1 favorite]

Generally I go with the cheapest decent option, but you say "The house needs a lot of prep work." If you skimp on prep, it's going to look fine right after it's painted but is more likely to peel earlier. So if the painter does a better prep job, it might not only look better but last longer, which would save money in the long term.
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 2:31 PM on July 9, 2020 [3 favorites]

Painter. I got recommendations from the Sherwin-Williams store, I've seen this recommended multiple places and it got me folks who live/work in my area, maybe use them to check out your neighborhood painter? All four folks from the SW recs seemed to know what they were doing / plan for appropriate prep but only one has an online presence vs. the one guy off yelp who was clearly going to half-ass it based on his visit and then never sent an estimate. FWIW, of the four "good" painters, two estimates were basically the same, one was 10% less (the top SW rec, oldest business), and one was 50% more (has had his business the least time).

A lot of owning a house is deciding what you care about. Are you going to be satisfied if your paint is ok or is it going to bug you every day for the next ten years that it's not perfect?
posted by momus_window at 3:44 PM on July 9, 2020 [3 favorites]

I used to work for a general contractor. I agree with everyone above - go with the person who specializes in painting.
posted by MexicanYenta at 4:59 PM on July 9, 2020 [1 favorite]

Painter. Our painter did 3-4 days just on the prep work. It’s worth it.
posted by matildaben at 7:15 PM on July 9, 2020 [1 favorite]

Go with the painter.
posted by slidell at 9:33 PM on July 9, 2020

Sign a contract with the painter, and don't pay him more than half until the job is done.
posted by Cranberry at 1:02 AM on July 10, 2020