Well a lot of beginning painting contractors do not include preparation in their estimate. And they don’t include it for several reasons.

1) They blow it off because they don’t want their estimate to be high and lose a job.

2) Sometimes the preparation prior to painting can be very difficult to estimate in that it’s not easy to count or define it.

3) They are inexperienced and they underestimate just how much time it can take, and say, “Well I’ll do it as I paint or it will be done at some point.”

4) Customers often undervalue the preparation, and the painter does not know how to sell the importance of it.

Whatever the reason for leaving this item out of the estimate, leaving it out can be a sure fire design for disaster. By not including enough time for preparing surfaces prior to painting, will do one of two things, either the painter cuts corners thereby cheating the customer and doing a poor job, or the painter will lose money by doing the preparation for little or no moneylearn this here now.

Neither of these two outcomes is acceptable to a professional painter, or for anyone who wants to stay in business and earn a good income.

The prep work on a job can sometimes be as much as ten times the amount of labor as the actual painting. The only thing the client will see is the finished paint job; however if the paint peels three months after you get paid, you can be sure that you will get a call back and no future work from this person. And of course if you have to do the prep after you have already put the finish coat on the job, you can be sure that the time you spend correcting the prep after your final coat will be triple what it would be if you did it the first time.