Exterior Painting: DIY vs. Hiring a Pro

If you own a home or property in San Diego and its environs, you might be wondering if you should hire a professional for exterior painting or go DIY. This is a huge decision, considering that your home is probably your biggest investment so far. Painting can be fun and exciting, but it can also be labor intensive and overwhelming, especially if it involves repainting the entire exterior of your home.

A lot of homeowners have defiantly attempted repainting their own home exteriors. But many times, after a few missed steps, cuts and bruises, and wasted cans of paint down the line, they realize DIY is not the best option. Yet, a few others have successfully completed exterior painting projects on their own despite the challenges and downsides –and ended up saving significantly on the cost of labor.

So, should you hire a professional painting contractor or try the DIY option? Here are a few important considerations to put in mind as you ponder over that.

Your Level of Experience
If by any chance an idea of painting your own home’s exterior has crossed your mind, I am going to assume you have some level of training and experience. As earlier mentioned, an exterior painting project can be quite overwhelming. Forget how they make it seem romantic and fun in movies, in the real world, residential painting can be difficult especially if you’re a novice.

Professional exterior painting contractors have the skill, experience, and tricks to produce fine-looking results that will stand the test of time. Painting a multi-story home on a slope, for instance, requires skill and a steady approach in order to produce quality results while remaining safe on the ladders. If you’re not sure of what you’re doing, you might simply end up with a huge colorful mess.

Size and Shape of Your Home
Even with reasonable skills and a considerable level of experience, it’s important to consider the size of the job before deciding on going DIY. A relatively small one-story ranch home or shotgun shack might not be too much for an average DIY enthusiast. You can complete most of the work within 3 to 6 days with a few helping hands here and there.
However, if you have a relatively large two-story home, homes with massive exterior surface or homes with unconventional configurations such as the Victorian homes, the exterior painting project can quickly get out of hand. Hiring a professional home exterior painter means they will provide a trained and skilled crew with the right equipment to complete the project in the agreed time frame, no matter how big it is.

The Condition of the Walls
Applying paint on perfectly smooth drywall isn’t that labor intensive, however, most exteriors that are due painting are never perfect. In fact, you’re probably considering a repaint because your paint is peeling, cracking, and bubbling, and maybe your drywall has a few missing patches.

Repairing any damaged siding sections and preparing the surface is the first step of exterior painting projects. All the sanding, caulking, stripping and pressure washing is labor intensive and can be overwhelming. If your walls need extensive repairs from holes, cracks, water damage or settling, you should probably hire a pro.

Tools and Equipment
Other than the skills and experience, you’re going to need a number of specialized tools to successfully pull off an exterior painting job. At the very basic, you will need different paint brushes, rollers, paint trays, painter’s tape, drop cloths, ladders, scaffolding, caulk gun, paint scraper, orbital sander, pressure washer, and so on.

While you can rent a few of these items, buying most of them can easily blow out your home exterior painting budget. For professional painting contractors, painting is what they do for a living and they have invested in the best tools that will make the painting project flawless, fast and cost-effective.

Bottom Line

As you can see, DIY exterior painting is a reasonable option but only if you have the skills, experience, tools and equipment, time to spare and, well, a good amount of elbow grease.

Or you can simply skip all these obstacles and hardships and hire a professional painter for high-quality, durable and timely paint result. If that sounds like a great idea, please schedule a free exterior painting estimate below, or give us a call for more information.