Painting the exterior.... Am I being ripped off...

A question about : Painting the exterior.... Am I being ripped off...

We live on an estate that is primarily Housing Association property. We bought a house in this area recently.

The Trust that owns the properties are painting the top half of the houses (upstairs only, exterior) to all the HA tenants abd because we own our house they have asked the contractors to see if we want ours doing as well to make it look nice...

We do want it doing but the contractors are saying it will cost us Ј700 to get this done....

Personally, to paint the front and back of a house should not cost Ј700 - am I being ripped off here, because they think that I have bought the house I have more money to burn...

Best answers:

• We are just about to have the back wall of our house painted. It is partially rendered and partial brick but we are having the whole lot painted, including doors and windows. We have one man doing it, approximately 10 days work and the estimate is Ј960 excluding materials.
  Our house is a (smallish) 4 bed detached. We have used this decorator for years and the price is about what I thought it would be - there is a lot of prep in our case because the wooden fascias are in a bad way.
  Does this help?
• The work that they have been doing on the other houses have taken all of about 2 hours per house.... so to me for Ј700 - that is really expensive.
• We have just had a quote for the external painting of our house. We have a decent sized 4 bedroom detatched. The roof is also high, so high that the last decorator we asked to quote refused to do the work.
  The quote we have is for all external paintwork including 2 sets of metal gates, facia's, doors, window shutters etc and includes materials. For that we are quoted Ј780.00 + VAT.
  I think that this quote is OK but it sounds like I am having more work done than you, I would expect this work to take the best part of a week. I certainly wouldn't be happy paying Ј700 for a few hours work, I'd be looking to get quotes from elsewhere.
  Hope this helps.
• Allowing for them doing 2 coats, I would say this is a ridiculous quote, by someone trying to make a fast buck! Ive just priced to paint 10 windows, 6 sashes, 1 door, and 3 lots fascia boards, 2 cotas of undercoat and 2 coats of gloss, and chaging Ј1250 for just labour. They wont have to buy materials because they will have them. I would price this at about Ј150-Ј200. As with the weather as it is, they would easily do it in a day.. Hope this helps
• What I think people lose sight of is that someone working for a HA needs to follow all health and safety requirements and will be following a formal plan monitored by the Planning Supervisor (this is a person appointed under the CDM Regs and nothing to do with Town and Country Planning) acting on behalf of the HA. This will mean that they should scaffold the houses to work at first floor level and not work off ladders (blame the EU). They will also probably be a larger company with bigger overheads and the necessity to provide welfare facilities for their staff and be accounatble for VAT, NI, PAYE as well as Income Tax. This all cost!! Additionally the HA will also be responsible for ensure that the contractor complies witha lot of these requirements
  You local builder who gives you a quote can work cash in hand or lose the money in the two sets of books he will invariably keep as well as being more “creative” on the Health and Safety side. Basically householder are not reponsible but an employer such as a HA of Local Authority are working under very stringent Regulations and Guidelines which cost everyone money.
  So the bottom line is it will normally be cheaper to get it organised yourself.
• just had total exterior 80% rendered painted (3 sides) and all woodwork (soffits etc) garage doors (front and rear) painted, quoted and paid Ј500 which I thought very reasonable
• paint the lower bits yourself and just get them to quote for high stuff - that way my quote was Ј450
• I agree with newunk - and did anyone see 'streets ahead' tonight on channel 4?? It didnt take them more than a weekend to paint a STREET!! Id do it myself personally!
  Jo xx
• What you didn't see was that it was only one side of the house was coated apart from first house. I bet the back wasn't touched.
  As said by kingshir we need to make enough money to meet overheads etc.... a skilled tradesman can allways tell when it's a DIYER and personally it looks a cheap job with a poor finnish.
  A normall three bed semi giving 2 coats to walls, facias and doors should come in around Ј700-Ј1000 depending on the awkwardness of it and roughness of the walls.
  If you've got painted windows, gutters and down pipes the price will be more, because time is money as they say, but realistically it would be a 2 man job for about a week so considering the paint could cost up to Ј250+ (depends on brand) i'd say thats not a bad price.
• Why not get a quote from another decorator for comparison purposes ? my mum had the outside of her house done last year. It is a detached 2 storey property (about 1200 sqft) with the upper half of the front and one side rendered (rest is red-brick). She got all the woodwork (soffets and fascias - no windows, since they are PVC) sanded, undercoated and two coats of top coat along with two coats on the rendering. If memory serves me correctly it cost about Ј700-800 including VAT (I think that also included materials) and took 2 people 3 days.
  Ivan