@ frugalscholar: I wish! M’hijito and his roommate actually started to paint the house. Then they discovered that painting a house is…well, work. They also decided they didn’t like the color. So the back porch has been San Francisco Bay Bridge Red for the past two years, the front windows have had unpainted white caulking gracing the mullions, and the decrepit paint everywhere else has grown steadily more decrepit.

The neighborhood is not going to turn around and we are not going to get rightside-up again if properties deteriorate. Even the place on the corner that’s been in foreclosure three times since we bought our house is decently maintained. Most of the houses are adequately cared for, with just a couple of exceptions. One of the exceptions has been our place. It was a wreck when we bought it; we’ve managed to renovate the interior, and now we need to make it look at least acceptable on the outside. I figure I’d better get as much done as we can while I still have an income, because once I’m “retired,” there won’t be any money for upgrades to that place.

M’hijito is paying half the bill for the painter and the locksmith. That will allow me to pay my part out of cash flow. What we’re going to do about the landscaping remains to be seen….

Of course, you may want to support your local painter.

Also, your local painter has many tax breaks and it is unlikely that he pays 40% in taxes. The contractors and painters of my acquaintance have so many tax deductions that, even though they seem to make a lot more than I do, their kids qualify for Pell grants! My kitchen contractor told me that he pays almost nothing in taxes on a pretty good income. Self-employed people have many tax breaks.

$200 in paint on a $1,000 job is a bit high.

On a $1,000 job my breakdown was usually:

–$120 paint & other materials (rags, new scraper blades, caulk, glaze, drop sheets, sandpaper, gas for power washer, etc)
–$30 marketing expenses (paying people to go door to door, discounts for booking on day of estimate, etc)
–$50 misc expenses
–$400 labor (including taxes, workers comp, insurance, etc, about $220 of it actually goes to the painters)
–$400 profit

A $1,000 paint job would take one day. Pretty much $1,000 = 20 labor hours, which is done in one 10 hour day with a 2 man crew.

A lot of jobs I just booked and hired people and would just get the profit. Some jobs I would hire myself as a painter in order to get more money.

If you want to estimate paint usage, I generally charged about:
–1 gallon for every 100-200 sq ft of siding (depends on material, cedar shake, paneled, and how dry it is)
–1 gallon for every 80 feet of decorative eaves
–1 gallon for every 20 shutters
There are lots of contributing factors.

Man, I am a dork.

(Speaking as the woman that still has to borrow stepladders to finish the “over the sink” area of the kitchen…)