Jed Bankert is the owner of BHS Bankert Home Services in Cary, Illinois. Through his home improvement and repair business, he interacts with customers throughout the state and local area, and says one of the most common questions people ask about are any tips he can offer for painting or wallpaper installation. In this article, he tells us what advice he generally gives.
The best reason to have a professional paint your interior walls is just because you want the job done right the first time. Whether you’re painting, putting up wallpaper, or doing pretty much anything else to the walls in your home, the only way to ensure that you are going to end up with a professional-looking finish is to hire something with experience to handle the job.
A lot of times I see homeowners who go ahead and try to start painting their walls themselves, and they end up getting paint not just on the walls, but also on the carpet, the crown molding, and all these other places where it shouldn’t be.
Even worse is when people try painting their walls by themselves without using all the correct primers and brushes. What they end up with is walls where you can see the patched areas showing through—and in addition to that, sometimes you can see that the ceiling is a slightly different color.
Although there are a lot of places to buy paint these days, one factor that you have to consider is that a professional like myself has the expertise to know which type of paint is right for which type of job. A lot of the paints that we use are of a better quality than what homeowners will end up buying at their basic home supply retail store.
Once the specific paint is taken out of the equation, the next thing to consider is the application of the paint. Professionals know how to apply the paint, and whether there is any patchwork that needs to be covered up or disguised before the project can begin. A true professional will know how to cover any patched-over spots by using the right primer and flat paint for the job.
The typical process that we will go through in a home we are working on is to use a primer, if necessary, along with a flat paint. And then we will cover all of that with the finished color paint. And that way when you walk along the wall it looks like there are absolutely no imperfections in it whatsoever.
I believe that most homeowners are willing to pay a little extra for that type of quality paint job, too, even though it is going to be more expensive than if they had tried to paint the room on their own.
Normally, for a basic 12 x 15 foot room without especially high ceilings, we would charge $500 to $600 for the job. But that price includes everything—not just the labor, but also all of the paint and supplies that are going to be needed for the job.
The most common rooms that we get hired to paint are usually bedrooms and living rooms. However, there are times when we might be working with a homeowner who decides to have us paint his whole house on the inside.
For a typical-sized furnished house with seven rooms, two-and-a-half bathrooms, and a basement, you could be looking at a price tag of around $4,000 for all the paint, supplies, and labor costs on a professional paint job. That is about the average size of a home in the areas of Illinois that I service most frequently.
Now, people don’t just want their homes painted, of course. They want wallpaper, too. Truthfully, if someone wanted my advice today on wallpaper installation, I would recommend he try handling it himself rather than hiring a pro for the job.
My favorite wallpapers are the paintable ones that have texture on them, and my least favorite wallpapers are the ones with really busy designs. One great thing about the textured wallpaper is that people can paint right over the wallpaper to create a really nice effect, so that is something that would be fairly easy for a homeowner to put up himself.
Although there are handymen out there who do handle wallpaper installation, this can be a costly and time-consuming project for a handyman. That’s why I recommend that homeowners get a price quote and check on the reputation and experience that a handyman has before hiring him to handle a wallpaper installation job. And in most cases, I think people are better off handling these types of easy projects on their own.
