Painting

If you make your decisions on who will paint your home or business strictly on what you will be paying today chances are you will end up unhappy in the long run.  There is a lot you may not know about how to decide who does a good job and who does a bad job. So I, Mike Buddemeyer, would like to offer you some free advice.

How to tell good painters from bad painters

Good painters spend more time doing the prep work than actually painting the house.  They use the best quality paints.  They don't need to use blue "painters" tape.  They paint the moldings "before" painting the walls. Years later their work still looks "like new".

Paint Quality

It may surprise you but quality paints are often more cost effective than cheap paints.  The reason being that while a cheap paint may be a few dollars less per gallon it can take twice as much to cover the same amount of wall space.  But even more important a cheap paint can start to fade in just a year or two. A good quality paint would still be looking great (like new) for much longer.  This means you don't have to paint as often. 

Prep

If prep work is not done correctly paint can fade, peel, crack or even fall off in chunks.  This is especially true on seams (improper caulking), outdoors (the walls were not properly sanded or treated with the correct adherents).  It can also result in cracks appearing around the molding inside and outside your home.  In the case of textured walls and ceilings if the surface is not properly sanded and the right adherents used the result can be cracking and even chunks of the ceilings and wall covering falling off.  I cannot stress enough that the most important part of painting is the prep work.

Painters Tape

One of the first signs you will see with a bad painter is when they start to pull out rolls of blue "painters" tape.  Good painters almost never use tape because they know the end result can look cheap. Whereas bad painters surround trim and moldings with tape (to protect from overspill) good painters take a different approach. They paint the trim and moldings first.  This helps give a quality appearance for many years because they intentionally overspray an area around the molding as they paint.  They then hand paint a line on the wall around the molding with the wall color before actually painting the wall. This gives a smooth transition from molding to wall.  Whereas if tape is used their is "a line" where the tape is pulled up. Worse, the pulling up of the tape stresses the paint creating very tiny cracks in the paint at the seams between the wall and the molding.  Over time these cracks spread and create gaps between molding and walls.  Basically, if they pull out painters tape send them packing and hire a quality painter.

Resale Value

Some people feel that they may not stay in their homes for a long time. That within the next few years they may decide to move.  So they go with a quick, cheap paint job trying to save money.  Unfortunately what they do not consider is that this paint job may fade (cheap paint), have cracks and seams along the molding (Painters tape) and look bad by the time they go to sell the house.  If on the other hand they had gotten a good paint job the paint would still look fresh and new adding perhaps tens of thousands of dollars in appearance value to their home.

Mike Does It Right

We only use quality paints.  We only use quality painters.  We do quality prep work.  Our goal is to have you telling your friends years from now what a great job we did so that we can earn your referral business.

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