Time is the job of the estimator; whereas, Dollars are your hourly rate. We get the time for a job from the historical records that we build up. The hourly rate is calculated from your overhead. Notice to all painters in caps, your hourly rate has nothing at all to do with the "going rate", whatever that is perceived to be at any given moment.



Oh yeah, paint. Paint on none of my jobs ever comes to more than 12 to 15%. So why does the homeowner get all excited about maybe saving a penny, if they buy the paint? Probably because painters want the client to think paint is a big part of the estimate. If the customer saves 10% it would be a lot; but, 10% of 12% is not much, and it can lead to headaches if you run out of paint. That's why I talk customers out of buying the paint. The first part of the process is to measure surface, and for estimating use the paint manufacturer's coverage rate with some tweaking should work for the estimate.

One thing is certain, I am glad that I liked geometry in high school. Knowing basic geometry makes the job of estimating paint jobs very easy. Square footages are just length x width. Gables might look tricky but they are not at all. Draw a line down the middle of the gable and you have two right triangles (meaning) if you join them they make a rectangle. Rectangles are L X W. How do you know the height of a gable if it is too high to measure? If it is a clapboard house, we can count the clapboards, and add them up after measuring one board.

In two of our biggest items, wallpaper stripping and removing old paint on a house, we used to only do as Time and Material, we only estimate by giving a firm number. We have found that T&M is dangerous for several reasons. Although the client believes that T&M is safe, I have been in too many situations where the client was not prepared even after telling our shop rate and possible materials. And we ended up getting stuck with a client refusing to pay; because, they just weren't ready for "that big" of an amount. We rely and update our historical figures on this type of work. A firm quote will either get you the job or not; but, it won't let you finish the work and then have to negotiate for your pay.

Unit estimating or counting units is probably the fastest and most accurate method for determining an estimate. What this method does is to assign a value to a "unit". Most systems using this method will count doors, windows, cabinets, and shelving units all at the same value. If you choose the right dollar figure you are safe and fast.

There are hundreds of ways to estimate a job. We have tried a lot of them. They mostly all work, some faster than others. The fastest is the WAG method, we don't subscribe to this method, otherwise known as the Wild ***** Guess Method.