How to Successfully Estimate Painting Jobs
Here are seven tips to help you successfully estimate painting jobs. Painting contractors think there are tricks to estimating paint jobs, there are no tricks.
1) Keep your mind on your business; do not worry about what other painters are doing. Focus on your business and what you need to make money. You need to know how much you need to charge not any other painter’s prices, just your prices.
2) Job Costing 101- Keep track of your time spent on the jobs you are doing now. Like how long does it take you and your crew to paint a six light window or how long does it take for you to paint a six panel door? How long does it take your crew to paint 100 square foot ceiling eight foot high? How long did it take you or your crew to paint one hundred square foot of wall? How long did it take for your crew to paint one hundred lineal feet of crown molding at eighteen feet high? Do keep records of how long it takes your crew to do the individual items.
3) When you do your measure call, count individual doors and windows; when you measure ceilings and walls just take the length and multiply by the width for a total square footage.
Measure lineal feet of molding, baseboard, chair rail and crown molding.
4) Now for walls and ceilings, take your square footage total separately for walls and ceilings and divide by one hundred. So for example, if you had 2600 square feet of wall then divide by 100 and you get 26 hundred square feet. Now take 26 and multiply that by you historical times, see Job Costing 101, then you have the time it will take you to do 2600 square feet of wall. Count up the doors on the job and multiply by the historical times for your company, see Job Costing 101. Do this for each item separately.
5) Take the total times for each individual item and multiply by your hourly rate. So if it takes your crew 26 hours to paint 2600 square feet, multiply 26 hours times YOUR shop rate. For example if you charge $30 per hour, you would charge the customer $780. If it takes your crew 30 minutes to paint a six panel door, then that equals $15 per door,
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