How to avoid/price for paint disasters?
While doing a whole-house paint job for the interior of my own house, I started wondering… how do painting contractors avoid and/or price for “paint disasters”. By this, I mean the fun stuff I ran into in my house… previous coats that appeared to be adhering fine, but ended up peeling off in sheets when a new coat of paint was applied, etc. I’ve heard of similar stories in my area where painting contractors have pretty much abandoned the job in an attempt to cut their losses.
My questions to the painting contractors… 1. How do you avoid this situation? The paint in my house seemed stable until enough moisture from the new paint hit it, then the stuff peeled in sheets. I’ve been using oil-based primer to avoid the situation now… is this the best approach? Any other tricks to try to determine if the underlying paint isn’t adhering well?
2. When things go wrong, what do your contracts state? Do you somehow switch from a fixed price to a T&M situation? From personal experience, I can see how a painter could lose his a– on a job like mine. A couple hour job turned into a multiple day ordeal… All of which was unforeseen.
Replies
I'm not a painting contractor but I work with many. The answer to your question is EXPERIENCE, lessons learned from experience, being trained by someone who knows what they are doing and keeping up to date on products/product combinations. It's not rocket science that the application of new acrylic latex paint with its capacity for movement over older oil will 'lift' the oil right off the surface - that's not moisture it is the physical action of one coat on another. DIY's think differently - they think about 'the best paint,' color and to some degree application. Painters think about PREP, STAGING, APPLICATION and WEATHER in addition to those issues.
T. Jeffery Clarke
Edited 5/23/2002 11:17:09 AM ET by Jeff Clarke