Painting the house

We need to get our house painted fairly urgently - and living in not-so-sunny manawatu means it had better happen this summer (I'm thinking late Jan/early Feb - hopefully I'm feeling semi-human by then).

We have an approx 130m2 stucco house with corrogated iron roof. I'm going to get a few people round to quote once I'm on maternity leave, but I was wondering if anyone had had theirs done recently and could give me a ballpark figure?

Also, how long does it take if you get a contractor to do it? A couple of days? A week? The alternative we were thinking of was hiring a student to do it. Do you think they'd do a good enough job and how much would you pay a student for it?

Any ideas/experiences much appreciated

The key to a good job is making sure it is prepared properly (sanded back well, boards replaced where required etc). Once prepared well almost anyone could paint it so long as like mentioned above they don't paint windows shut!

I have a feeling our friends paid something like $15k but that sounds crazy so can't be right surely.

It also depends on how old the paint is as to whether it has led in it (I think it's led). If it's old & has led then the old paint needs to come off a special way which costs more.

We were quoted around $15,000 for our house due to having led paint which I think is around 120sqm but it's weatherboard which might make it even more expensive than stucco (so don't know?).

I think if you got a student who has some experience then it could work out well. You could get him/her to prep the house & get a prof to paint it if you were concerned with the quality of work. I'd say $15-18/hr depending on experience (as a guess). Who really notices a bad paint job on the exterior of a house. You could even get him/her to do the sides which arn't seen much and get a prof to do the front & back if concerned.

We have a stucco house.

Water blast the outside...get a student.

BUT you need to pain pretty fast after this is done.

Same day fill cracks.

Next day paint. You will need two coats unless you are staying the same colour.

You could get someone with experience & TBH it doesn't take very long with the correct technique & correct roller. We watched the painter watched the painter roll the house next to us & followed his technique.

You need to be careful that its not to hot cause the paint goes off to quickly.

The stucco will be easy...the windows a little harder, you will need to check what the putty is like & if it's not good it's not that cheap to get it repaired.

You might need 2-3 10 ltr pails just for the walls?

Wow I'm impressed that it's not too expensive.

Has got me thinking... (I'm sure my Dh will love you all )

Lol emz. My DH is still working on the last thing I 'thought' of (re-papering our spare room). To be fair, I help too, but since I do most of the housework, he ends up with most of the renovation stuff.

I can't really offer any tips, Becs, but I'm watching with interest, because our house will need doing some day.

Wow, I'm liking the sound of $400!

Usually we'd do it ourselves, but with a tiny baby, I'm not sure its the best idea. How long did it take to do it yourselves? Maybe its a job for DH when he's got a month off to help me out

friend of mine was also quoted around 15k to do his house. we decided to do ours ourself. cost us about $400 in paint - on half price special - and we are almost done painting.....well outside at least...but the inside needs some tlc too. I don't mind doing walls and doors etc...but I don't have the energy to do the ceilings, which we have to too...hasn't seen a lick of paint in decades

Doing it in bits works well for me. I have to cause of bills but screw paying someone thousands to do what I can do myself. Its not that hard. You guys could do it while bubs is asleep. We hardly saw Daniel in the early days cause he was only up an hour at a time if that and you could just do a couple of hours. Its amazing what you can get done in a couple of hours.