# How long to paint interior



## MP Construction (Apr 24, 2013)

I was wondering how many man hours you guys would estimate it would take to paint interior of 1500 sg ft house with 8 ft ceilings, simple white recoat walls and ceilings. baseboard and three doors also painted, no window/door trim to paint. No patch work really. Nice floors and furniture to protect/move. Planning on brush and roller, I don't have a lot of experience painting but need to give a bid. Any help appreciated


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## skillman (Sep 23, 2011)

Two man hours . Just throw it on the wall and look back and watch dry for the rest of the hour and half .


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## griz (Nov 26, 2009)

Good job of avoiding a pricing question...:thumbsup:

Are you an experienced painter or a guy who paints when there is nothing else to do? Never mind I re-read the post..... 

What's on the walls now? Covering a color/s?

Texture style? 

With out seeing the job it is difficult at best to give you a guesstimate.

The nice floors & furniture are a big red flag to me....


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## Jaws (Dec 20, 2010)

My line is , if you cant bid, you shouldnt do it.


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## griz (Nov 26, 2009)

Jaws said:


> My line is , if you cant bid, you shouldnt do it.



cuz, if you knew how to do it.....

You'd know how to bid it....:thumbsup::laughing::laughing::whistling


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## skillman (Sep 23, 2011)

Tell you what paint a room In Your house over and go from there . Kills Too birds with one stone . Not sure if married but would give you brownie points . It's such a small sq you can't go wrong with it . Worst case you loss your time .


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## Pete'sfeets (Mar 20, 2011)

:laughing::laughing: If married ,I dunno about brownie points but sure would be great exposure for suffering thro insanity to deliver good customer service., and hey if ya got kids get them to help , it'll be good for learning charity and perseverance


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## Driftweed (Nov 7, 2012)

Spend $50 and build ya a practice wall like I did. 12' long x 8' tall kinda like a sidewalk gable (?). Drywall and mud it. Then go to the paint store and pick up some mis-tint paint on the cheap.

On your days off paint your heart out.

I called it my handyman wall. Because I would practice drywall hole repairs as well. (making the hole is so much fun).

Otherwise, aim for 1 room/day (12 x 12 x 8) and thats slow.


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## Easy Gibson (Dec 3, 2010)

As a carpenter with spotty work that has been filling in with painting jobs lately, I feel for OP.

OP: How experienced a painter are you? Do you have enough drops/rollers/brushes/pans/workers to do this? Can your guys paint? If you're doing brush/roller you're going to need at least one guy that can cut quickly or the entire thing is going to go to hell in a hurry.

Good luck man.


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## hdavis (Feb 14, 2012)

Prep can easily be more than the painting time, and there is NO way to give any idea what that is going to take. For the 12X12X8 already given, I'd go 1 day per room for paint, or 1/2 day if it's easy. Unfortunately, all that stuff in there is going to slow you down. You didn't say what size roller 9,12,(14), 18, or multiple sizes, etc Can you roll into a corner, or do you have to cut them? How fast can you cut?

Way too many factors to come up with a good number.


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## MP Construction (Apr 24, 2013)

Thanks for your guys input, pretty much all flat white walls and ceilings, so not too much cutting in. The doors and windows are milcore, no trim, just the baseboard. I have experience spraying cabinets paint/ lacquer and have painted some here and there so I'm sure I will take longer than a painter. I was thinking 5 days bid for me. Asked some other painters today seems like there consensus is 4-5 days for them.


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## Caslon (Dec 15, 2007)

skillman said:


> Two man hours . Just throw it on the wall and look back and watch dry for the rest of the hour and half .


play guitar too


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## princelake (Jul 17, 2012)

depending on how much the people hoard you'll be spending a pile of your time playing furniture mover, laying drop sheets, taking down pictures, taking off wall plates, etc. the painting is the shortest quickest part of the job. and there is no way to give you a time on all of this without seeing the place.


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## Frankawitz (Jun 17, 2006)

Well I don't know how long it will take but I just did a 11,000 sqft office suite and it was all new sheetrock and I had 29 oak doors to stain and varnish it took me 3 weeks and now I am waiting on the Mexicans to get the rest of the lobby sheetrocked, I primed and two coats finish.


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## Spike7 (May 18, 2012)

MP Construction said:


> Thanks for your guys input, pretty much all flat white walls and ceilings, so not too much cutting in. The doors and windows are milcore, no trim, just the baseboard. I have experience spraying cabinets paint/ lacquer and have painted some here and there so I'm sure I will take longer than a painter. I was thinking 5 days bid for me. Asked some other painters today seems like there consensus is 4-5 days for them.


I really hate it when people ask questions like this .
it shows no initiative to learn.
are you really going to trust us , or any one else with how much your going to make?

when ever a fellow tradesman ask me " hey , how do you price this kind of job" I just tell them to figure material cost . then figure how much you can each day , and multiply the amount of days to how much you feel you want per day.i won`t tell them my cost 

. its not that I`m threatened.

its just that why enable a non thinking person to non-think!

all you have to do , on any job if your unsure of pricing , is break it up into small pieces

how long would it take you to paint one room ?
how long would it take you to paint one door?
how long would it take you to cover all the furniture with plastic?
measure the freakin place out ,drive to the paint store and ask him how much paint you need.or figure it out yourself by plain math.
I`m not a painter , but I know that most paints spread around 250 sq. ft per gallon.

come on man !
the worst that will happen is you won`t make a lot , but next job you will know how to bid by experience


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## Inner10 (Mar 12, 2009)

Frankawitz said:


> Well I don't know how long it will take but I just did a 11,000 sqft office suite and it was all new sheetrock and I had 29 oak doors to stain and varnish it took me 3 weeks and now I am waiting on the Mexicans to get the rest of the lobby sheetrocked, I primed and two coats finish.


There ya go...so 11000 takes 3 weeks...so 15 business days 11000/15 =733.3 square feet/day


Therefor you are looking at around 2 days+ for 1500...


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## Driftweed (Nov 7, 2012)

After about 5 or 6 whole house paint you should have your numbers down pat.

There are 1000 ways to price a job. Sqft, daily rate, etc... 

After each job give yourself a performance review. Ask yourself these questions:

Did I make as much as I should have for the time I spent on the job?

Did I do it fast enough?

Could I have done it faster?

What (if anything) slowed me down? How?

Was my quality as good as I expected with the materials I used?

Should I have used different materials to increase quality/speed?

Review your expenses. Did you spend more than expected on unforseens (fuel, materials, etc).

Be honest and audit yourself. It will only make you better.


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## CraftPro (Nov 17, 2012)

Driftweed said:


> After about 5 or 6 whole house paint you should have your numbers down pat.
> 
> There are 1000 ways to price a job. Sqft, daily rate, etc...
> 
> ...



This is the best response I've read so far. The best way to improve yourself and your business and get better. "Be honest and audit yourself" says it. You should be your own hardest critic.

To those of you who bashed the person who started the thread: get a grip man, and give a fellow contractor a break. He/She came here for our advice. (I'm speaking about one person in particular, but we aren't here to bicker so I'm not naming names).

*To the original poster who started the thread:* If you are inexperienced with painting to the point that you need advice on how to come up with a quote, then that job is too big for you. Pick and choose your jobs, or you'll either lose money or you will do shotty workmanship. That said, if you want to go ahead with the job and its all white, little to no prepwork, then 3-4 days sounds right for a more experienced painter. 5-7 for someone with less experience. I'm sure you CAN do the work. I have found that sometimes the hardest part is, in fact, estimating the time a job will take, not actually doing the work. Getting time estimates down to the hour takes decades of experience. I don't have that, and I have lost money on a couple jobs because I grossly underestimated the time the jobs would take.

Good luck! Hope everything works out for you! :thumbup:


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## Driftweed (Nov 7, 2012)

Another secret:

Add 2 days.

It is far better to finish early than have to look like a fool for running over the promised deadline.

I'm nowhere near where I want to be speed wise because I wanted to focus on technique/quality first.

Now that I am nailing down some pretty darned straight edges freestyle, I'm analyzing ways to speed up.

I have four 3 br apartments to do starting next week. I told them 5 days each, even though I'm aiming to do each in 3 days. (10 rooms each, no ceiling or trim, but lots of prep)

Today I prepped all 10 rooms in 3 hrs and did a side 1/2 day job. Tommorow I break out the brush. I am shooting for having all brushwork done in 12 hrs. That will be a personal best.


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## Metro M & L (Jun 3, 2009)

You should be doing those three bedrooms in a day. Two if you have to patch holes. Day one - mask, spackle, wash grease in the kitchen with tsp, sheetrock repairs. Day two sand, spray ceilings, spray trim cut and roll walls. If you don't have separate trim to paint you just mask horizontally on the door's windows across the top for dryfall when spraying ceilings. In my neck of the woods two bedroom repaints go for about 150-250 with the large companies that have 100's of units; I stopped doing that work as soon as humanly possible. 

If they're supplying paint you can turn that into time by spraying or using a 18 inch frame (more waste in the large roller bucket). If you have cheap labor but you're paying for materials (masking paint) you can turn that into money by brush and roll to a point. Depending on layout spraying can become more profitable than brush and roll regardless of the waste. 

Now let's say you're getting more like a grand to paint your three bedrooms. If you do it in two with a helper on the second day you'll be more in the 300$ per day range (200 materials, 100 helper). Or you could do it brush and roll by yourself in five days and $150.00 per day. Rough numbers but you get the idea.


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## Driftweed (Nov 7, 2012)

I don't have a sprayer yet. I considered whupping out the 18 incher, but the kitchen/ stairwell led me to lean towards the old 9 incher. Was going to try and hercules through it with 1 roller/brush solo.

Sad thing is I almost bought a sprayer last month. 

Your hypothetical # is close to what I'm getting (8) plus they supply paint (color match).

Maybe I should cave in and get a sprayer. Just figured I should dial in the manual way, before going and getting one.


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## CraftPro (Nov 17, 2012)

I got by for quite a while without a sprayer and would just rent one for exterior jobs when I first got started on my own last year. CraftPro Contracting is less than 2 years old and about 1/2 of our work is painting and the other 1/2 is drywall and finish carpentry.

I don't even own a 9-inch roller or tray! I get everything done with a sprayer and the BigBoy (that's what I call my 18"er), my Mini (3" roller) and my brushes: 3", 2 1/2", 2' (mostly just use the three). 

*Metro M&L's advice was solid*. Obviously a pro painter. But, like most things, there's more than one way to do it:

*If you're not spraying you don't need to was time taping and masking (and I don't know which is quicker, honestly): cut-in the ceiling, roll the ceiling, paint the trim, roll the walls, cut-in the walls neatly because you said you can paint a straight a line, like all pro painters should (if you want to be extra special, use a mini roller and roll over your brush marks if its fast drying latex patch which I imagine it must be - this way, no brush marks).*

Before going out on my own I worked with the most expensive painter in my county and he had a very high opinion of his talent and knowledge. Like everything - it's debatable. But he would never have us waste time taping off or masking indoors unless we were spraying. He insisted on his crew being neat and clean and brushing straight lines. Only ever taped when there was some special surface to protect (like stained wood, etc).

My point: follow M&L's advice if you can get your hands on a sprayer and get that job done quick.

Good luck! :clap:


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## Frankawitz (Jun 17, 2006)

Inner10 said:


> There ya go...so 11000 takes 3 weeks...so 15 business days 11000/15 =733.3 square feet/day
> 
> 
> Therefor you are looking at around 2 days+ for 1500...


Well being I cut in all walls tops and bottoms and corners before I rolled them out, which was one primer coat, one finish coat off paint, plus I also stained, shellaced and varnished 29 8' oak doors all by myself other then one and a half days I had two helpers and the Boss:laughing:
Now this past week carpenters hung plaster panels in lobby which have to be plastered and painted.


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## Driftweed (Nov 7, 2012)

Good advice on the 3" roller. I usually come equipped with 3" brushes (1/color) & 9" rollers 1/color. And I keep the 18" on standby if I need it. 

The only time i use tape is in my walkthrough to mark any spots that need improving.

I timed myself this weekend to analyze different brush methods. The results were surprising.


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## profinish (Oct 7, 2005)

A Handyman wall??
LOL


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## Driftweed (Nov 7, 2012)

profinish said:


> A Handyman wall??
> LOL


Hey, its also great for screening helpers. Walk over, punch a hole and see how they fix it. Or hand em a brush and tell em to cut in the ceiling. 

Cuts through the "I've been doing this since ***x" bullcrap.

Sometimes I have too much time... I miss that wall


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## renov8r (Feb 16, 2013)

For me I would average about a week and a half alone. With a helper for sure I'd be able to drop it down to 5-7 days. That would be for prime, paint and cover up things. You have factors to consider though, what type of furniture are you going to be moving and covering up? Where are you going to be moving it? Are you going to have to be adjusting your drop sheets more then painting? All these things take time, and most of the times I find they are more time consuming then the actual painting.


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## carzie (May 21, 2013)

Just paint like Mr Bean...drop a cherry bomb in a gallon and run like hell...don't forget to close the door


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## Sir Mixalot (Jan 6, 2008)

carzie said:


> Just paint like Mr Bean...drop a cherry bomb in a gallon and run like hell...don't forget to close the door


:laughing:


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