Residential Painting: When Not to DIY
Why You Should Hire a Professional Painter for Your Bay Area Home
Safety
While you might not consider painting to be a particularly hazardous profession, you’d be surprised how easily you can injure yourself attempting a DIY house painting job. Outdoor surfaces, such as grass, gravel, or even pavement, are typically uneven, which can cause a ladder to lose stability. You don’t want to be six or ten feet up in the air when the ladder you’re on starts to wobble. You should seriously consider the height at which you might be working before deciding to take a DIY approach. For example, while painting trim might be a fairly straightforward task, climbing onto the chimney to color-match the paint can be quite dangerous.
Costs
One of the benefits of hiring a qualified, professional contractor is the cost. While yes, you will be paying for labor, you’re given one cost right upfront that includes all of the materials, labor, and time required to complete the job. Compare this to the DIY method, in which case you’re going to need to first purchase all the supplies needed: primer, brushes, trays, rollers, tarps, tape, a ladder, cleaning supplies, and finally the paint itself. And while you won’t be paying labor if you do it yourself, you’re going to have to perform that labor. That means scheduling at least one full weekend to clear the space, covering the ground and roof with a tarp, applying the primer, and then finally beginning the painting itself. Why deal with all the hassle and headache of budgeting this out when you could hire a local, qualified painting contractor?
Comfort
Painting a house requires repetitive, forceful action, enough to apply the paint evenly on the outside of your home. When you hire a professional, you’re hiring someone who’s used to this work, who’s built up the muscles and muscle memory necessary to perform this sort of job all day. A DIY painter will likely be feeling the effects of having spent an entire weekend performing the same motion over and over for weeks.
Quality
No matter how meticulously you perform the job, no matter how closely you pay attention to what you’re doing, it’s far too easy to slip up. Whether you’re painting your trim and the paint has dripped beyond your tarp and stained your roof or walls, or you’re spot-painting a small area and you find that when it dries it’s not the same color, hiring a professional is the way to go. Our contractors will use special painting techniques to avoid paint drips, while still achieving the high-quality, straight-lined job Endure Painting is known for.
