Painting is the trade where the part you can see is the smallest part of the job. Tell us what needs painting and we will line you up with Wasatch Front contractors who quote the work underneath the color.
The part you can see is the smallest part of the job.
Pick the one closest to what your house needs and we will route you to someone who does that work regularly.
Walls, ceilings, trim and doors, plus the patching and caulking that decides whether the finished room reads smooth or shows every old nail pop. Inside the house, sheen matters as much as color, because sheen is what you touch and wash.
Learn more →Your south and west walls are aging faster than the north and east ones, and Utah sun is the reason. Exterior work is washing, scraping, sanding, caulking and priming first, then color, inside the part of the year the weather allows.
Learn more →A different craft from wall painting. Cooking grease has to come off, the existing finish has to be dulled so anything will stick, and the topcoat has to survive fingernails, cleaners and doors that get closed and wiped down all day long.
Learn more →Washing, scraping, sanding, caulking, patching and priming. It is most of the labor in a good paint job, none of what you photograph afterward, and the first line quietly deleted when a bid needs to come in low.
Learn more →Decks, fences, railings, doors, beams and interior woodwork. Stains and clear finishes behave differently from paint, because some soak into the wood and some form a film on top, and those two fail in completely different ways.
Learn more →Three steps, and the first one is just a conversation.
Interior, exterior, cabinets, or all three. Which rooms or which elevations, and what the surfaces are doing now.
Washing, scraping, sanding, caulking, patching, priming and coat count. That list is the job. The color is the last part.
Two quotes only mean something when they describe the same prep and the same number of coats.
Painting looks like a finish trade and it gets judged like one, but the visible part is the last few hours of a long process. Before a brush touches anything, surfaces have to be washed so the coating is not bonding to dust and pollen, loose material has to be scraped off, scraped edges have to be sanded so old and new meet flat, gaps have to be caulked, holes and dings have to be filled, and bare or slick surfaces have to be primed. Skip any of that and the paint still goes on beautifully. It just does not stay.
This is also why bids move around so much. Prep is the only part of a painting quote that can shrink to almost nothing without changing what the job looks like on the day the crew leaves. A wall that was cleaned, filled, sanded and primed and a wall that was rolled straight over dust and gloss are indistinguishable in the driveway photo. They stop being indistinguishable later, usually on the elevation that gets the most sun or the surface that gets the most hands. When you read a quote, read the top half, where nobody bothers to put the pretty words.
Homeowners compare painting quotes on the number, because the number is the only field all three quotes have in common. The rest is a pile of unstated assumptions: one includes ceilings and one does not, one plans two coats and one just says paint, one prices scraping and priming the bare spots on the fascia and one prices painting over them. None of that is necessarily dishonest. They are careful answers to three different questions, and you are comparing them as if they were all answers to yours.
The fix is boring and it works. Ask every bidder the same short list: what prep is included, how many coats, which surfaces are in and which are out, and what happens to the areas where the old finish has already failed. Get it in writing from all three. The prices will still differ, but now the difference means something, and the low bid either earns its number or starts explaining. That conversation is usually where the real scope finally shows up.
Salt Lake, Utah, Davis, and Weber counties — Ogden down to Provo.
Salt Lake City · West Jordan · Provo · Bountiful · Murray · Herriman
Most of it. On a repaint, washing, scraping, sanding, caulking, patching and priming routinely take more labor hours than putting the color on, and on a weathered exterior the ratio gets lopsided. That is exactly why prep is the first thing trimmed when a bid has to come in low. If a quote does not describe the prep, it is describing a paint job whose length you have not been told.
Peeling in sheets is usually not a paint problem, it is an adhesion or moisture problem underneath. Either something was between the coating and the surface, or water is getting behind the film and pushing it off. Chalking, where the surface leaves a powdery residue on your hand, is a different story and points to age and UV exposure. The two need different fixes, so the cause has to be identified before anybody quotes a color.
It depends on where in the season you are asking and what the nights are doing. Exterior coatings need surface and air temperatures inside a range while they go on and while they cure, and the curing part continues long after the crew goes home. Late-season work is not automatically wrong, but the margin gets thin, and a cold night on fresh paint can undo a good day. A contractor who says the window is closing is protecting your job, not stalling.
No, and treating it like one is why kitchen finishes fail. Cabinet surfaces carry cooking grease and hand oils that have to be cleaned off completely, and existing factory finishes are usually too slick to accept anything until they are deglossed or scuff sanded. Then the finish itself has to be built for daily contact rather than for covering a wall. Different prep, different products, different skill set.
It can. Homes built before 1978 may contain lead-based paint, and that changes how those surfaces can legally be disturbed. Sanding, scraping and heat all create dust and debris, so testing and lead-safe work practices belong in the conversation before prep starts, not after. Tell whoever quotes the job how old the house is. A contractor who shrugs at the year is a contractor to keep shopping past.
Get quotes that price the prep, not just the color.
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