If you’ve been in your home for several years, it may be time for a new paint job. Whether you’re doing an exterior or internal painting project, local professional house painters can add new life to your house and make it look brand new again. You have over 248,376 painting contractors in the country to consider, according to IBIS World. With so many potential painters to hire, there are many questions you should ask them to help narrow down your choices. Here are some common ones to get you started.
1. Can I See Past Examples of Your Work?
One of the first steps you should take is to look at past examples of their work. Referrals are always a great way to gather information on your potential contractor, which we get into down below, but pictures are a great place to start. You can reach out and ask the company or you can take to social media to find previous examples. That way, you’re already sure that they offer the quality you’re looking for before diving into the other steps below.
2. Do You Have Insurance?
Do you wonder why insurance is important for your painting contractor? First of all, painting can be more dangerous than it looks. After all, painting can involve chemicals and solvents that can affect the respiratory system, and that’s why painters wear masks when working. Plus, if your painters are working on more than one story, they may have to deal with scaffolding or ladders. Anybody can fall from any height and hurt themselves. While someone is working on your property, you don’t want liability in case something goes wrong. If they have an accident while painting your residence or commercial property, their work-related insurance can cover everything and relieve you of any responsibility. You can also take this opportunity to check if they’re licensed and bonded.
3. How Many People Will Be in My House?
When you’re getting your house painted, expect some strangers to be inside your home unless you’re personally familiar with the work crew. As a result, you may want to know as much as you can about who exactly will be doing the job and how many people to expect. Even if you don’t know their names, you at least have a head count of who’s in your home, which may give you some sort of relief. It can also help to prepare you in case you have little kids or animals.
4. Do You Have References?
References are a must whenever hiring a new contractor to do a job. You want to be sure that your house painters have experience doing this type of work and can act professionally. For example, a reference can confirm whether or not the crew has a habit of showing up on time or being late. Did they leave anyone’s house in disarray, or did items ever come up missing? Has there ever been an issue with the chosen paint color or quality? After all, you don’t want to pick a color and then end up with walls that seem to be a different hue than what you originally picked. By getting a few references to validate the professionalism of the painters, you’ll know that you’ll be spending your money and time wisely.
5. What Prep Should I Do on My End?
House painting requires a great deal of prep work on a professional’s end. They’ll wash the walls and scrape any existing paint down before applying new paint. They’ll also cover up any items left in their room and push them away from the walls. They achieve an immaculate look by taping around areas where the paint isn’t supposed to show up. With that said, you may wonder what prep you can do on your end to make their experience easier and hopefully avoid obstacles when it comes to the job.
Since you know items have to be covered or moved, one of the best things you could do is move some things out of the room before painters arrive. Move anything you can into closets, into a corner, or towards the center of the room. You can also move tiny items off of your shelves so you don’t have to worry about things falling, sliding around, or getting broken if movers have to move a bookshelf.
6. What Type of Paint Do You Use?
There are several types of paint on the market. However, if you hire an experienced team, you can assume house painters are using the highest quality paints available. But you can play it safe and ask them what brand they use and do research on your end if you’re curious about the chemical composition.
7. What Is Your Cleanup Policy?
One of the more stressful elements of having contractors working in your home is whether or not they’ll clean up their work after the fact. Many contractors will automatically leave the home the way they found it. However, some may not have that policy. While that’s something you can ask about when you question referrals, you should confirm the policy with the house painting crew themselves.
8. Will You Provide a Written Estimate?
Before anyone does any work in your home, make sure you’re aware of how much it’ll cost you. Even if you don’t have a strict budget for your painting project, you don’t want to get ripped off. So ask the house painters to provide an itemized written estimate of the work involved. Be aware of how much everything cost such as the paint itself, labor, potential overtime, and more..
9. Who Is My Main Contact?
There may be several people running the company, so confirm who the main contact is. If there is an emergency, you don’t want to be playing phone tag, e-mail tag, or scrambling for contact information. Make sure you have the name and best contact option for whoever is in charge of the project. Then, if any issues occur, whether it’s with payment or worker behavior, you can deal with them as soon as possible.
10. How Long Will the Job Take?
Experienced painters can give you a general time the job will take. Whether it’s one room or your entire house, you should have an idea of how long workers will be there. House painters have to consider how long it will take for prep work, priming, adding on different layers of paint, and waiting for everything to dry. Of course, the size of the space they have to work with will factor into time as well. It’s good for you to know in case you and your family should leave the house for a day or two or more while the painters do what they have to do.
When workers enter your home for any job, whether it’s interior painting, exterior painting, or other contractor work, you want to feel confident that you have the right people on hand. So don’t be afraid to ask these questions or any others you may have. When you use our house painting team, we’ll be more than happy to answer any questions, as we’re an experienced team of professionals who can get the job done right the first time around. Contact our team at Top Tier Painting Inc today for a consultation.
