What do I need to do to get ready for the painter? Nick May of Walls by Design, a painting contractor in Denver, CO answers this question.
So today’s question is all about getting ready for the painter. And the question is – what do I need to do to get ready for a painter? That depends. It depends on how much your painter is going to do for you. One of the things that we’ve found over the years is that customers are ready, willing, and able to move the things in their home to save a little bit of money. So we’re typically going to offer every customer about a 10% discount if they move furniture and take wall plates off and take window treatments down. Those are all just tasks that my guys don’t have to do. So we’re going to ask for at least four feet away from walls and all of the personal items to be removed from the space so we’re not tripping over things, we’re not worried about breaking anything, and then our guys can put drop clothes on the floor and plastic over all of the furniture and personal items. Some paint contractors will automatically do everything. We’ve just found it’s better to give the option because some of our customers, and I would say 80-90% of our customers take us up on this and get everything ready for us to come in and just paint. When we do that, our guys are typically brush in hand within an hour of being on that project. Otherwise, we’ve got to move things and then start taping. It’s a little bit more timely to do that and costly to the homeowner. It depends on the customer. As a rule of thumb, we’re always going to have customers move pictures and breakables in those kinds of things. I will say that we have had the occasional customer that wants us to move everything. So if we’re moving pictures and breakables and personal items, then we just charge an hourly rate to do that. Hopefully that answers, but the best thing I can do is if you’re not working with us, ask your pain contractor and figure out exactly what’s going to happen on the front end.