Interior painting cost estimates

[Jason McCullough]

Har har, another consumer thread.

Now that Betsy and I've ganked the icky carpet downstairs in favor of wood, we're looking at getting it repainted. About 1000 feet across 2 bedrooms, a bath, a living room - ceiling, walls, trim, and doors.

We just got back our first estimate - $6,700. Putting brand new hunks of wood on the floor only cost $4,500. Geez.

What's a reasonable price for this, considering Seattle labor costs? It's surprisingly hard to find this sort of thing online.

[Houngan]

erm, 1000$? Tops? That's quite a market you have there. You're talking about 8 gallons of paint, mas o menos, and maybe four or five hours for a crew to knock it out, after the prep work is done. I think there must be something I'm missing in the estimate.

H.

[Raife]

We just got back our first estimate - $6,700.

Sixty-seven hundred dollars?(!) You could almost buy your own ship for that.

[Edit]: Seriously, that's ridiculous. If the market's that bad up there, do it yourselves.

[Guido Jones]

May I suggest Home Depot (http://www3.homedepot.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ContentView?storeId=10001&pn=HDCOM/InstallationServices/Painting/PaintingLanding&BV_SessionID=@@@@1279213583.1171775062@@@@&BV_EngineID=ccccaddkekdhjkmcgelceffdfgidgmj.0&retKey=Services&retType=PROD_META&freeship=false&domJsFile=finddom_ext_v4_7.js&styleSheet=hdstyle_ext_v4_10.css&hdJsFile=hd_ext_v4_102.js&locJsFile=locator_ext_v4_3.js&userLoggedIn=false) - if nothing else, you get a free estimate.

[Marcus]

6,500 seems really high.

You could do it your self if you are so inclined. Painting really isn't that hard.

[Brandon Clements]

Har har, another consumer thread.

Now that Betsy and I've ganked the icky carpet downstairs in favor of wood, we're looking at getting it repainted. About 1000 feet across 2 bedrooms, a bath, a living room - ceiling, walls, trim, and doors.

We just got back our first estimate - $6,700. Putting brand new hunks of wood on the floor only cost $4,500. Geez.

What's a reasonable price for this, considering Seattle labor costs? It's surprisingly hard to find this sort of thing online.
It shouldn't be that much, but if you have a lot of color changes (walls one color, trim another, ceiling yet another) it will be more. For reference, I've had a 1350 sq ft house painted several different wall colors (but same trim and ceiling color) for around $2000 before. Ask around, someone's bound to have had some painting done recently. Don't be scared to ask the painter for references either.

It's not hard to do yourself, either. A little messy perhaps, but not difficult. If you go this route, though, do check and see if the current paint is oil/lead-based or latex (if its in the past 15-20 years or so, it's probably latex). If your current paint is oil-based, you'll need to prime it so that the latex paint won't lift. You'll also want to wash the walls with TSP or something else to clean them.

[Robert Sharp]

When I was selling a house, I was able to get it painted (for selling, mind you) for $300. That included trim, but I got a reference from my real estate agent, and the guy liked having her for a client, so he cut me a bit of a deal. That said, 6700 is freakin ridiculous. Clearly it's worth doing yourself if you can't find a deal MUCH lower than that (like 1/5 at the most).

[bloo]

Some contractors must think "I'm going to throw out a totally ridiculous price to see if this guy fall for it."

[dannimal]

What's the breakdown? How many hours of labor (which is where the cost is)?

What color are you going from, and what color are you going to? Going from dark to light is more expensive than light to dark (if only because you need to prime it, which kind of doubles the labor).

Are they doing a coat of primer, then sanding, then primer, then sanding, then painting? That might (well, almost certainly will) be overkill, and blows up labor costs.

How complicated are the rooms? Are the walls in good shape? Having to paint around lots of stuff (windows, corners, trim) and/or having to spend time patching up walls adds to the cost.

How many men are doing the work? If one guy would take 10 hours, but they send 2 guys to get it done in 6 hours (1 day), it'll cost you more (by 2 man hours), but they might do that because they can finish in a day (granted, this doesn't pair with the overkill 3 coats thing, it's just something to consider).

[Kyle Wilson]

Where's a Hugo Chavez to institute painting price controls when you need him?

[Rywill]

Sounds crazy. Why not do it yourself? Painting is easy and if you're careful an unskilled person can still do a really good job.

[Ben Sones]

Yeah, that does sound crazy. The price of doing it yourself would probably be around $200 at the most. Probably less. And that includes all of the supplies you'll need, which you then have for future painting projects, and assumes that you'll be buying top-quality paint (California and Dutch Boy Dimensions are good), which you totally should. It doesn't take long to paint a room, most of the time you'll put into the project is in the prepwork. If you live in new(ish) construction, there won't be a whole lot of that, other than cleaning the walls.

$6700 for interior painting is highway robbery. 98% of that price tag is just labor, and the labor that goes into painting requires very little skill. This is a job that has "sweat equity" written all over it.

[shift6]

Do it yourself. If it costs you more than $1000 (including everything!) and a couple fun weekends painting with your gurf and maybe a friend or two, you've been highway robbed in the ass.

[Ben Sones]

Even $1000 is way, way high. He's painting 1000 square feet. That's maybe three gallons of good quality paint, plus a gallon or two of primer. Brushes, rollers, tarps, rags, sanding and patching supplies... if that stuff costs you $1000, then you're still being highway robbed. ;)

[Enidigm]

Are we talking about painting with compressed air or a brush? Re-texturing the walls or not?

If you do it the hard core professional way with a sprayer, (generally only done when your refurbishing a room), it's a lot of manual labor.

[Ben Sones]

Using a sprayer to paint a room in your house is sort of like buying a zeppelin to commute to work. Pointless and expensive. You can get better results with a brush and roller (which is what most of the best pro painters use, anyway) for a fraction of the price.

[TomChick]

Using a sprayer to paint a room in your house is sort of like buying a zeppelin to commute to work. Pointless and expensive.

Your analogy sucks, because my first thought was "how totally cool would it be to commute to work in a zeppelin!"

-Tom

[Jason McCullough]

Good to see I'm not insane. I was expecting like $3,000, tops.

The guy was pretty insistent on spraying. No primer, only minor sanding, and we'd already bought all the paint ourselves. Rooms are straightforward rectangles with nothing fancy.

In the breakdown, he put pulling the trim and baseboards and painting those at $2,700. I shit you not

Betsy and I have just decided to do it ourselves anyway, she's painted stuff before.

It's not hard to do yourself, either. A little messy perhaps, but not difficult. If you go this route, though, do check and see if the current paint is oil/lead-based or latex (if its in the past 15-20 years or so, it's probably latex). If your current paint is oil-based, you'll need to prime it so that the latex paint won't lift. You'll also want to wash the walls with TSP or something else to clean them.

Ooh, good to know. Thanks.

[Ben Sones]

It's actually kind of cool to use a sprayer, too, but you really don't need one. A roller and a few brushes will do the same job, easier and more quickly, for a lot less money. So I'll stand by my analogy. :)

Also: pulling trimwork? Ugh. That sort of crap is exactly why a sprayer is uncalled for. A skilled painter would do the edging by hand, with a brush, and it would look better. And he wouldn't charge you $2700 for it.

[Marcus]

Jesus even 3,000 sounds like way too much.

[SlyFrog]

Um, $6,500 is like half of the cost to completely remodel most rooms (maybe short of a kitchen).

The guy should basically be punched for insulting you.

[Sparky]

Your analogy sucks, because my first thought was "how totally cool would it be to commute to work in a zeppelin!"
And I'll even paint your zeppelin for $2k. For $500 extra, I'll do flames up the front. A bargain, compared to those Seattle prices.

On second thought, maybe flames would be in poor taste for a zeppelin.

Okay, make that the scene from the first Star Wars poster airbrushed on one side.

[Bullhajj]

If you owned your own zepplin, you would never have to pay to see a football game again.

[Dean]

I had a roommate who was a professional house painter, and when he moved in he agreed to paint the whole apartment if I did all the prep.

So over the next couple of weeks I scrubbed walls, sanded, taped off windows, and moved and covered furniture.

I'd get a room all prepped and tell him, he'd inspect and tell me all the shit I did wrong, I'd fix it (another couple of days), then he'd walk in with his sprayer, say, "Don't come in here." Less than an hour later it would be done.

Granted he was just blasting everything with white, but it was cool how quickly he could knock out a room.

[Ben Sones]

On second thought, maybe flames would be in poor taste for a zeppelin.

No, it's perfect! Also, you could paint tromp l'oeil depictions on the side of passengers jumping off in terror.

[Raife]

I had a roommate who was a professional house painter, and when he moved in he agreed to paint the whole apartment if I did all the prep...

Your ex-roommate sounds like an asshole.

On second thought, maybe flames would be in poor taste for a zeppelin.

No, it's perfect! Also, you could paint tromp l'oeil depictions on the side of passengers jumping off in terror.

Awesome.

[Demon G Sides]

Awesome.


Totally Agreed... You could take a trip to Germany in that with style.

[CounterMeasure]

The last house I lived in (which was 1500sq ft), I had a painter come and do a bunch of work and painting. The work included fixing some drywall cracks from settling, re-texturing almost all of the walls and vaulted ceiling, and painting all of it plus all the trim and doors. He used Sherwin Williams primer and 30yr warranty paint, so it wasn't cheap stuff, and spent about 5 days doing all the work. He charged me $2500. I did get estimates from other guys, and some were lower, but used cheaper materials.

So with that in mind, $6700 is insane, unless its being done by a bunch of hot college chicks, and they are atleast topless. Then I would say go for it, and recoup some of your cost by charging a cover to your friends to watch.

[Raife]

So with that in mind, $6700 is insane, unless its being done by a bunch of hot college chicks, and they are at least topless.

$6,700 is still way too much, but I fully support the idea.

[ElGuapo]

Want to hear one better? I had a leak in my roof last year after a two day long downpour. I call up a random guy in the phone book to come take a look. He goes up on the roof with a digital camera and takes some pictures, comes back down, and says the whole roof needs to be replaced (it's a flat roof with tar and gravel). Shows me some pictures.

He gets back to me the next day with a quote of $15,700, saying I need to get it replaced before the next rain or I'll get deadly mold in the walls, etc. So I grab a ladder and go up there. Not a year beforehand I had gotten a house inspection (before buying) and they guy told me the roof was in great shape.

I find the roof is in excellent condition (took lots of pics and sent them to my Dad just in case, who has tarred and gravelled many, many flat roofs). There is a some minor damage/hole in a part of the roof, about the size of a golfball. The rest is in pristine shape. The gravel is not even sun faded. So I grab a bucket of roof tar ($7) and some paint sticks (free) from Lowes, go up there myself, and slap some tar down. Took less than 20 minutes. It's held through many, many bad storms since then and I went and checked on it again a few months ago, still looks great.

Savings, $15,697.

Doing stuff around the house is just not that complicated. It really isn't.

[BaconTastesGood]

Doing stuff around the house is just not that complicated. It really isn't.

If you have time and a willingness to kill material costs on fuckups, absolutely.

Just be careful about anything that involves code or potentially damaging you or your house. For major electrical work (pulling circuits), permitted construction, and any kind of plumbing, hire it out to a licensed craftsman.

For stuff like demo work, paint, toilet replacement, landscaping (not including trenching), and what not, do it yourself.

For tile, hardwood installation, and framing -- that's a personal call.

[Dean]

Your ex-roommate sounds like an asshole.


Best roommate ever. He lived at his girlfriend's house and paid his rent on time. He'd stop by occasionally to say hi. In a year of renting, he slept at the apartment twice, when his girlfriend's family was in town.

[Houngan]

1000$ was my Pacific Northwest markup price. Around here, it would be more like 600$. Pulling baseboards? Um, fifteen minutes and a prybar. Same with the trim. A sprayer is ridiculous inside, as well. Find some small handyman who hires immigrant labor, and you're set.

H.

[shift6]

Even $1000 is way, way high. He's painting 1000 square feet. That's maybe three gallons of good quality paint, plus a gallon or two of primer. Brushes, rollers, tarps, rags, sanding and patching supplies... if that stuff costs you $1000, then you're still being highway robbed. ;)
Heh yeah probably, but it's still way less than $6K.

I think 1000 feet (including ceilings) is far more than 3 gallons of paint though. I haven't done interior painting in about five years but I helped a friend of mine from whom I was renting a room. We did just his main "office area" which was 3 walls of a ~200 sq ft room and it took about 3 gallons not including the ceiling. Previously it was papered, so we had to remove that stuff and it didn't come off just with elbow grease. Needed some solvents and those sputula looking "knives" to get it totally done. Then we spackled up any holes or nicks that f'ed up the texture. Then lay down plastic sheets, masking tape everything (trim, windows, holding tarps, electrical fixtures). Rollers and brushes, etc. All of this stuff is piddly, but not cheap if you don't have any of it already. I'm thinking all that is $100.

Paint. You will need two coats, the minimum if you are keeping the current color and just freshening it up. Double that if you are going from something dark/loud to something light/subdued. The intarweb suggests about 400 sq ft of wall area per gallon. That's 5 gallons to do two coats of 1000 feet of wall/ceiling area. To be safe I'd buy two extra gallons; you don't want to need more and have to go mix more and get a slightly different shade. So at a reasonable $20+ each, that's another $150. If your trim is to be a different color, that's another $20 gallon. And so on for each extra color (like if your baseboards are different from window sills or something, or in different rooms).

Add in extra for super-rad textured paints and any other stuff you may want like new switch/outlet plates to match the rooms, etc. Another $100 just as a SWAG. Throw in $100 to buy Subway and sodas for a few friends to come help you out on a Saturday. Round way up to be safe with your budget, and including tax. No more than $500 tops duder.

Also: pulling up baseboards is a waste unless you intend to totally replace them. There's no good goddamn reason. Paint them or tape them off if they are to be a different color.

[Phil_Stein]

Totally agreed on pulling baseboards - that makes no sense for ordinary situations. That's why they invented masking tape.

My brother did exterior painting for several summers in college. He said there was a big difference in paint quality between good and bad. Bad paint takes more coats to cover, so do your research on this. I assume this applies to interior paint, too.

Otherwise, as all others have said - this should be cheap and reasonably fun, if you have any interest at all in home projects.

Do a good job covering everything with tarps - even if you have to use those cheapie plastic jobs. But real canvas tarps are better if you have access to them, because when a drop of paint falls on a canvas tarp, the paint is basically absorbed. On plastic tarps, the paint just sits there in a liquid pool - waiting for you to step on it or brush up against it at some point.

I don't see the need for a sprayer - use a roller and a couple brushes.

Basic supplies (NOT counting paint) should be <$30 - assuming you can borrow a stepladder (or have one already).

The nice thing about paint is, even if you mess up, for the most part, it's pretty easy to fix - just give it another coat.

[Jojo]

Masking tip (learned this the hard way), if you are going to be painting baseboards with oil-based, and the walls with latex in a different color to the baseboards. When you mask off the wall to do the baseboards, remember that some paint will always seep under the tape and give you a slightly ragged edge. To solve this, mask off the wall above the baseboard, then paint over the tape edge with the wall color latex paint. The latex paint will seep underneath the tape onto the wall where it doesn't matter and it will also form a nice seal so the baseboard paint doesn't seep under onto the wall. Putting oil-based paint on top of latex is fine, but latex on top of oil-based looks weird, so its fine to paint the baseboard paint over the top of the latex there.

Now paint the baseboards and when you pull the tape off, you should have a lovely clean edge where the tape was. Note that the professionals don't use masking tape to get that edge, they just do it by hand. But I can't get a steady line, so I have to do the tape trick. I hope that explanation made sense, its hard for me to explain without a diagram.

[wumpus]

EL GUAPO, ARE YOU MAD? YOUR ROOF COULD COLLAPSE AROUND YOU AT ANY MOMENT!!1!one

We had the same problem with interior paint estimates (walls, trim, no ceiling, kitchen + cabinets, ~1400 sq ft, 3br, 1.5ba) on our home -- many, many thousands of dollars.

We had an entire month of overlap between our rental and owning the new house, so we just said to hell with it and did it ourselves. The only downside is many long days. It's not too much fun to come home from work at 5pm and work until 10pm painting only to get up the next day and do it all over again.

I don't mind spending money for jobs that are dangerous and/or take skilled labor, like plumbing and electrical. But painting is just grunt work with a tiny bit of up-front planning.

[wumpus]

Throw in $100 to buy Subway and sodas for a few friends to come help you out on a Saturday
I would never, ever ask my friends to help me with shitty manual labor jobs. I just wouldn't.

But then I really don't have any friends, so it's kind of a moot point.

[Sparky]

Jason - shift6 and I are coming over to paint your house. I have a nice Roger-Deanesque mural planned for your living room involving a wizard, a flying unicorn, a barbarian and a space princess who look like you and Betsy (I know you want to pose for the space princess), and that scarab from the Journey album covers.

ps: we will just tape over the damn baseboards.

[BaconTastesGood]

An aside: I'm a huge fan of Porter's high end stuff ($36/gallon I think) because it's really, really stain/mark resistant. I believe it's called "Silken Touch". With kids around the house, being able to wipe down the walls is really nice.

[Houngan]

36$? That's pretty high. Behr or Porter normal grade is usually good enough. I'd say a good starting point is 25$/gallon, anything cheaper and you risk have to do two coats.

Also, cheap primer with a bit of your paint mixed in for tint works much better than plain primer in covering different colors.

H.

[BaconTastesGood]

36$? That's pretty high. Behr or Porter normal grade is usually good enough.

I agree, but my attitude is that the cost differential vs. lifetime of the product is fairly small. It's like skimping $20 on shoes. The Silken Touch really does make a difference with kids around the house. If you don't expect to have your walls marked inadvertently, then the regular price stuff is just as good I assume.

[Houngan]

Makes sense, I don't have to deal with kids, my main concern is getting it down in one coat.

H.

[Ben Sones]

Heh yeah probably, but it's still way less than $6K.

I think 1000 feet (including ceilings) is far more than 3 gallons of paint though.

Paint. You will need two coats, the minimum if you are keeping the current color and just freshening it up. Double that if you are going from something dark/loud to something light/subdued.
Not necessarily. The two most important things that I've found in the process of rennovating my 1910 house are the type of paint that you use, and your use of primer.

You definitely want to ante up for high-quality paint. Cheaper paint is a false savings, because it usually covers poorly, and you'll have to buy more of it to finish the job. High-quality paint (I've had good luck with Dutch Boy Dimensions and California Paint) can have much greater covering power. The second is use of primer. Primer is much cheaper than paint, and it provides a much better base to paint on. It's also thinner, and thus covers a lot more area (a gallon of primer covers as much as two or three gallons of paint--you don't need to get an even coat out of it) and helps you avoid building up a thick paint layer. If you find yourself putting multiple coats of paint on a wall, then you should have primed. Actually, you did prime--you just used expensive finish paint as your primer.

I've done several complete interior room rennovations now, and after the first one (in which I learned a whole bunch of things not to do), I've never had to coat a wall with more than one coat of paint plus a few spot touchups. I always prime everything first with a single coat of primer, even if I don't think I need to. If there are problems with coverage, you can always add more primer (though I've only had to do that once).

Sample project: my living room. Our house is a beautiful Arts & Crafts foursquare with an eclectic mix of Prairie and Colonial Revival details. It needed a lot of love when we moved in. The previous owners had decorated nearly every room in the house (and the exterior!) in a horrific combination of butter yellow and crimson, which I loathingly refer to as "McCountry." Here's what the living room looked like before we bought the house, during our walkthrough with the realtor:

http://www.odditorium.net/LR1.jpg


A lot of the woodwork in the house (all American chestnut, now extinct) is unpainted, but the living room and dining room were both covered, and we reluctantly decided not to strip them after determining that the process would probably take us several years. (We instead focused our paint stripping efforts on the trim in the front foyer, which was only partially painted and looked very strange).

Since the house has both Prairie and Colonial Revival features, we decided that it would be appropriate to do a Federal Style paint scheme in the living room, but with an earthy Arts & Crafts green as the primary color. We did decide to do one bit of paint-stripping in the living room, though, because neither Karen or I could tolerate the hideous grayish-butter-yellow soot-stained bricks on the fireplace. Who the hell paints a fireplace yellow? Karen worked on those bricks every night for a month with a scraper and methylene chloride, one brick at a time. The results were worth it, though.

http://www.odditorium.net/LR2a.jpg


In addition to stripping the fireplace bricks, we removed the giant mirror from over the fireplace (and discovered that the whole living room was once painted dried-blood crimson! Nice!), did a bunch of repair work on the window trim, and had some custom millwork done to replace the missing crown on the window casing in the window to the left of the fireplace. We also replaced all of the inner stops on the windows, which were chewed to bits when the previous owners put in vinyl replacement windows (which I hate, and would love to replace someday). Fortunately, they left all the stained glass windows intact.


http://www.odditorium.net/LR2.jpg


The window mouldings required a lot of repair work. We removed the hardware from about seven past window treatments from the casing over the window seat (that window also needed to have a new crown custom milled to match the existing casings), and patched holes from several additional ones. Prior to painting, it looked pretty ugly. Between the trim and the hideous crimson paint over the fireplace, we thought for sure we'd need many multiple coats of paint.


http://www.odditorium.net/LR3.jpg


Primer cures a lot of ugliness, though. It did take several coats of primer to cover the crimson, mostly because the binder in the paint had broken down and the pigment kept migrating through the primer coats. Everything else just got a single coat, though; I think we used maybe a half a gallon of primer for the whole room (which, including the ceiling and all of the intricacies of the trimwork, is close to 700 sq. ft. of surface area).

Ack... five-image limit. So, to be continued.

[Hanzii]

Before this thread I'd never heard of anybody spraying the inside of a house (unless it had just been built) - it seems like technological overkill and as others have said, the reult won't be as good. Having to pull baseboards because of the method and then charging the customer extra for this, just sounds like there's too many rich idiots in the Seattle area if this normaly flies.
My father in law painted the entire house inside in 5 days, before we moved in an he, me and his girlfriend painted the entire house on the outside (small but two floors of wood pannelling) in a long weekend.

Around here crazy houseprices have resulted in crazy waiting times for professionel work as well as crazy prices for subpar work done in a rush - which basically means that everything I am allowed to do myself (not electrical or most water) I do myself. So with that said, good luck Jason... now my concrete should be ready for the floor I'm doing in the downstairs bathroom. Tiles are next...

[Ben Sones]

Anyway, here's the same wall of the living room with primer. The fireplace is still bleeding through pink after two coats of primer, but that's not the color--it's the fact that the paint layer was failing. I probably should have removed it. Oh well, live and learn. I also no longer do as much masking on my painting projects as we did here. It's worthwhile to learn how to edge your trim by hand, by "cutting in" with a brush. It takes a steady hand and some practice, but it's a lot faster, and gives you better results.


http://www.odditorium.net/LR4.jpg


Remember the ugly window casings? This is how it looked with one coat of primer and one coat of paint (Dutch Boy Dimensions "Artist's White," semigloss). That plus a few spot touchups is all that it took to cover all of that raw wood and filler.


http://www.odditorium.net/LR5.jpg


And here's the finished room. Again, one coat of primer, one coat of paint (plus spot touchups) is all that it took, with the exception of the fireplace (which took multiple coats of primer, but still just one coat of paint).


http://www.odditorium.net/LR6.jpg


Moral of the story: buy good paint, and prime before you use it.

[Enidigm]

I've always used Sherman Williams paints to good effect.

Behr paint, and in fact pretty much all paints from the generic home improvement stores, seem rather watery by comparison.

Nice job Mr. Sones on your paintwork. Quite precise!

My reference to a sprayer previously, fyi, was whether the contractor was going to use one, not encouraging you to BUY one.

[SlyFrog]

We had the same problem with interior paint estimates (walls, trim, no ceiling, kitchen + cabinets, ~1400 sq ft, 3br, 1.5ba) on our home -- many, many thousands of dollars.

We had an entire month of overlap between our rental and owning the new house, so we just said to hell with it and did it ourselves. The only downside is many long days. It's not too much fun to come home from work at 5pm and work until 10pm painting only to get up the next day and do it all over again.

I don't mind spending money for jobs that are dangerous and/or take skilled labor, like plumbing and electrical. But painting is just grunt work with a tiny bit of up-front planning.

Almost as a separate question, I've had this issue with pretty much every handyman job. I get absolutely stupid estimates (no, not as bad as $6,500 just to do interior painting, but say something like $2,500 to paint just the trim in white for the house exterior on a standard house). But I can't find anything better. It's like all of the mainstreams guys are conspiring to fix prices, and the good "handymen" don't seem to exist (my friends, neighbors, etc. seem to have the same problem, they never have anyone to recommend).

How do you find these people who will do a decent job, but won't try to charge you $3,000 to replace an ordinary casement window (another "estimate" I was given)?

[shift6]

Jason - shift6 and I are coming over to paint your house. I have a nice Roger-Deanesque mural planned for your living room involving a wizard, a flying unicorn, a barbarian and a space princess who look like you and Betsy (I know you want to pose for the space princess), and that scarab from the Journey album covers.

ps: we will just tape over the damn baseboards.
Don't forget the space invaders stencils to go over the moonscape baseboards!

Moral of the story: buy good paint, and prime before you use it.
Damn, Sones. You should have a show on HGTV. Actually I had never heard of using primer to paint indoors. In my defense, all I ever did was help other people with the labor so whatever they bought is what I used. Heheh.

[Bullhajj]

Damn, I want a living room like Ben Sones!

[Jason McCullough]

Jason - shift6 and I are coming over to paint your house. I have a nice Roger-Deanesque mural planned for your living room involving a wizard, a flying unicorn, a barbarian and a space princess who look like you and Betsy (I know you want to pose for the space princess), and that scarab from the Journey album covers.

ps: we will just tape over the damn baseboards.

If you can work the cover of Tie Fighter in there I'm sold.

[chemdem]

Karen worked on those bricks every night for a month with a scraper and methylene chloride, one brick at a time. The results were worth it, though.

The Fireplace bricks look great, but in future I would suggest not allowing DCM (Dichloromethane = methylene chloride) into your home.

[Ben Sones]

We were exceedingly careful with it. We worked with strong ventilation, and Karen wore a respirator and heavy gloves. We also thoroughly cleaned the work surface after each session. It's nasty stuff, but nothing else we tried was effective at removing the paint from the bricks.

Normally, I use non-chemical means to do all of my paint stripping. I have several heat guns, and an infrared paint stripper that loosens large areas of paint without generating a lot of heat (useful if you are concerned about vaporizing lead content in paint, which I am).

[Hanzii]

It's funny how taste differs.
I had two walls in my living room covered by brickwork just like that (it's not a real brick wall, just a brick shell) I considered just breaking it down, but since I had no DIY experience I choose the cheaper solution and spent an entire day covering it in thick cement paint (not plastering, because then pulling it down and doing the original wall behind it would make more sense).
You can still see the individual bricks but everything is the same colour as the rest of the walls.
And I must say while I admire the quality of your work, I'd think you were 60 years or close... (but this is why we never review any of the many interior decorating software avaliable - it's all done to suit american tastes and all that brickwork, ornamented woodwork, dark wood and stained glass would never go over here (unless you belonged to my parent/grandparents generation).

[Ben Sones]

And I must say while I admire the quality of your work, I'd think you were 60 years or close... (but this is why we never review any of the many interior decorating software avaliable - it's all done to suit american tastes and all that brickwork, ornamented woodwork, dark wood and stained glass would never go over here (unless you belonged to my parent/grandparents generation).

That actually is funny, because the same thing was true in this country... about 60 years ago. Right after World War II, nobody wanted "older" style homes, and so you find a lot of Victorian and Arts & Crafts houses in the US that were painted all white and modernized in the late 40s and 50s. So here, it's the opposite. That Bauhaus-influenced, midcentury modern look is exactly the sort of thing you'd expect to find in your grandmother's house. Contemporary taste here have run more in the direction of historic preservation--people will pay a lot to get a home from the early 20th century or earlier, in original condition.

[Bullhajj]

Hanzi: Yeow, this looks like my grandmother's house.
Ben: NO! Your house looks like my grammy's house.

[Kalle]

Scandinavian interior design will rule the world. Muahahahaha.

[Enidigm]

Scandinavian interior design will rule the world. Muahahahaha.

I don't know how log cabins and fish heads will be a global phenomenom....

(i kid!)

[Enidigm]

Actually scrolling through "Scandinavian design" sites do bring up a whole lot of handcrafty flowery art stuff, with simple abstract patterns and strong primary colors, that looks straight out of decorations popular in the US during late 60's and 70s.

[Sparky]

Ben, your house looks great. I'm not sure about the pron over the fireplace, though.

I had two walls in my living room covered by brickwork just like that (it's not a real brick wall, just a brick shell) I considered just breaking it down, but since I had no DIY experience
All it takes is a crowbar and a big hammer. We had that real-brick shell all over our kitchen -- just took two days going all Gordon Freeman on it and then replacing the drywall. It's a million times better (and yes, Kalle, we did the kitchen all in IKEA stuff). Then again, I don't know what you'd have behind the brick* in your part of Europe. Do houses there generally have drywall? Or is it plaster? Plaster would be a nightmare.


*For the love of God, Montresor!

[Bullhajj]

Ben, your house looks great. I'm not sure about the pron over the fireplace, though.

If you look closely at the reflection on that picture, you can see Ben standing in his boxer shorts taking the photo!

[mystery]

Har har, another consumer thread.

Now that Betsy and I've ganked the icky carpet downstairs in favor of wood, we're looking at getting it repainted. About 1000 feet across 2 bedrooms, a bath, a living room - ceiling, walls, trim, and doors.

We just got back our first estimate - $6,700. Putting brand new hunks of wood on the floor only cost $4,500. Geez.

What's a reasonable price for this, considering Seattle labor costs? It's surprisingly hard to find this sort of thing online.

We've had 2 quotes on the first floor of our house for 1500.00. We've got about 1600sq ft on this floor of the house, with the front room spanning 2 stories. That was primer on everything (covering the "artwork" left by my youngest) as well as 3 different colors of paint.

So, yea, you're getting screwed.

[mouselock]

Since we've veered into interior design anyway:

Ben, what's up with doing all that work to clean up the place, putting up a picture which you presumably want to look at a lot over the fireplace, and not bothering to put in non-glare glass in that picture? Do you prefer the really reflecty stuff for some reason?

[Ben Sones]

The photo makes it look a lot more glare-y than it actually is.

[Hanzii]

I don't know how log cabins and fish heads will be a global phenomenom....

(i kid!)

Go to the Museum of Modern Art and look at the public areas - not the exibitions but the chairs and other furniture that is part of the museum.
90% of those were designed by Danish architects.

Without being an expert on the subject, I'd say that modern Nordic design is defined by lots of open space, roomy interiors, very light/white colours, raw/light wood. A lot of the popular architects and furniture designers that defined this trend did do their best work in the between 1950-1970 but it's still developing. Primary colours, not so much. But some pricewinning designs do play with abstract patterns ad strong simple colours - but definitely not in any way like the 70's use of colours.

[BaconTastesGood]

Without being an expert on the subject, I'd say that modern Nordic design is defined by lots of open space, roomy interiors, very light/white colours, raw/light wood.

In other words, Ikea.

[Hanzii]

Ben, your house looks great. I'm not sure about the pron over the fireplace, though.


All it takes is a crowbar and a big hammer. We had that real-brick shell all over our kitchen -- just took two days going all Gordon Freeman on it and then replacing the drywall. It's a million times better (and yes, Kalle, we did the kitchen all in IKEA stuff). Then again, I don't know what you'd have behind the brick* in your part of Europe. Do houses there generally have drywall? Or is it plaster? Plaster would be a nightmare.


*For the love of God, Montresor!

Depends very much of the age of the house.
Remember buying a house with a few hundred years of history (and plaster walls covering straw and bricks) isn't really that big a deal here. Bens old historic house wouldn't be considered old here (just made in a time when they built better houses).
Mines an above average 1971 house (meaning that most house built in the 70s here was crap) and that particular wall is pure concrete, so a layer of plaster and new glass tissue (which my dictionary claims is the correct term for glass based wallpaper, which isn't really paper) would have been quite easy - but my craemy white bricks look rather good and will look even better next week with nothing but a Philips Ambilight flatscreen as decoration.
Clean and simple.

[Hanzii]

In other words, Ikea.

IKEA has some decent designers working for them and they are part of the trend - but another part of the trend has always been massproduced but high quality which is why Arne Jacobsen chairs (http://www.themodernnyc.com/modern/modern.html) made 50 years ago still sells. Ikeas hallmark is massproduced design NOT built to last.
So while I have quite a lot of IKEA stuff myself, that's basically because I can't/won't afford the real deal.

[wumpus]

Really excellent work Ben Sones!

Our house was built in 1953, so we've done Atomic Age decorating here. We started by going through Better Homes & Gardens from the 50's at the Berkeley public library-- they have original bound copies of the magazines.

The 50's is a tough era for design, though. Linoleum was huge. Seafoam green colored porcelain as well. And here's a representative color swath:

http://www.boingboing.net/2007/02/07/authentic_1950s_inte.html

You have to pick carefully. ;)

[Chris Nahr]

Our house was built in 1953, so we've done Atomic Age decorating here.

Does that include a Pip Boy garden gnome?

[wumpus]

If you're selling, I'm buying.

Our wedding invitations had a PipBoy illustration.

http://wumpus.homestead.com/

Bonus trivia points: what's the derivation of the word "Jooky" referenced on that page?