House painting cost

House painting cost can exceed $3,000 for a 2,000 sq. foot house. There are a lot of steps involved in painting a house: power washing with mildewcide, trenching, sanding the wood surfaces, caulking (if needed), applying masking tape, applying primer, and applying 1or 2 coats of paint.   House painting costs will obviously depend on your area and will vary state to state.

Here are a few ideas of how to budget house painting costs:

• Do-it-yourself. If you are willing to do some hard work around the house and want to save money, then you don’t need to hire a professional painter – you can do it yourself. First you need to plan and budget the painting project. Plan to spend at least 4 days on painting the entire house. The best time to do it is on a sunny weekend. You should plan to spend $20-$50 per gallon of paint. On average, one gallon of paint will cover about 400 sq. feet. If you have a 3000 sq. foot house, you will need about 16 gallons of paint plus some for trims. So you might spend around $600 at $25 per gallon. Remember, better quality paint will last longer, meaning you don’t have to repaint your house as often.

• Hire students or daily labor agency. Hiring students or contacting a daily labor agency is a cheaper option to paint your house. You still would have to plan and supervise the work. It will be your responsibility to purchase the paint and pick workers. Students or people from a daily labor agency will charge less; the labor cost will be around $10-15 per hour. On average, once all the prep work is done, including setting up the site, power washing the walls, and masking the windows, it will probably take two men 2.5 days to paint the house.

• Hire professional painters. The easiest way to paint a house is to hire professional licensed painters. They will do the job quickly and nicely. To hire professional painters you would have to spend more, but the quality of work will be a lot better. In general, painters charge their customers per sq. foot. If you want a basic prep work and one coat of paint, then you should budget around $1.50 - $2.00 per sq. foot. If you want a full prep work and several coats of paint, you should budget around $2.5-$3.5 per sq. foot.