Changing Your Home's Look With New Paint & How to Hire a Contractor
Why painting is a top home improvement project in the Charlotte NC area.
Painting is ranked as one of the top 5 home improvement projects, listed by many popular home improvement magazines, when polling customers on home improvement projects they're likely to do within the next year or so. Not only is painting a more affordable home improvement project versus other home improvement projects, it is also a project some homeowners can, and often enjoy doing themselves. With big box retailers packaging tools together to lower prices, homeowners can often buy all of the required painting tools to do a room for under $100, or entire home for under $150. Home improvement stores in the Charlotte, NC area are always running sales on paint, so materials for a painting project are often very affordable, easy to estimate for, and easy to transport. With a $400-$500 budget, a homeowner can change the look of their home drastically, improve living space, and when painted in neutral colors, improve the "sale-ability" of your home as well. Painting is a general maintenance requirement on most exterior siding products, in addition to a large variety of interior projects
There are many reasons why homeowners paint their homes. General maintenance is one of the most popular, however there is a number of other reasons why homeowners want to paint their home. Sometimes a new homeowner will paint a new home before they even move furniture in, just because they had a different vision for the interior design scheme, then the previous homeowner did. Then there is the homeowner whose kids have grown up, and stopped drawing on the walls, and want new colors in the kids rooms, and paint over crayon marks in the hallway. Rental home landlords and investors, also generally have policies that include painting a rental unit, as one of the requirements for preparing a unit for a new tenant. Most everybody reading this blog has been in a home improvement warehouse retailer and seen the size of the paint section. Then you also have paint manufacturers like Sherwin Williams and Benjamin Moore for example, that have brick and mortar stores to sell their own paint. With such a competitive market for paint suppliers, it has kept the cost of paint low, and homeowners interested in changing their home's look for a few hundred bucks.
The do it yourself homeowner, generally doesn't have a problem painting a room or two in the house, but lets face it, if you've ever painted, you know how tedious and time consuming it can be. Not to mention frustrating, when you have to put 2 or 3 coats on because you didn't really know what you were doing when you got into painting. A flat wall paint probably wouldn't give a rookie painter to much of a problem, however eggshell and matte finishes are more common then flat finishes in today's market. Eggshell and matte paint products can show every brush mark and also roller marks, if your not experienced in painting with the products. For these reasons, homeowners will generally call a paint contractor or a general contractor, and let them use their professional experience to give their painting project a better finish and overall better look. Professional painters not only get the paint to finish better, they also make the painting surface look a lot better as well. Most painters can caulk and do light drywall finishing work, when they know a flaw in the material will show through worse with a colored surface.
So what do you want to look for when hiring a painting contractor?
Well first you want to locate one through either the Internet, newspaper, radio, word or mouth, or any other form or marketing. Nowadays, a lot of people simply do a google search, and get the same results as going to the newspaper. Usually the contractors on top, have put some time and effort into marketing their websites, and are rewarded in the search results by being at the top. Well maintained and updated websites always show up first in all the search engines. It's a good idea to call 3-5 contractors, to make sure that your getting a fair market price. Most of the bids are usually priced within a few hundred dollars, then its up to you to choose which contractor you felt the most comfortable with during the estimating process.
You should also no be afraid to ask questions, and if the sales person can't answer your questions, then you probably have an experienced contractor doing the estimate. Experience pays in painting, and they often have better equipment, and knowledge on how to get the job done right, and in a timely manner.
Another good idea is to look for a contractor that is going to do it in the time frame you need them to get the job done. Another good thing is to ask them for pictures of previous work if they don't have a website displaying their work.
In addition to asking questions, you should also search the company online, and check social media review sites like Yelp and Google+, and look for reviews of the company. Sometimes no reviews is a good sign as well. People generally only leave excellent and poor reviews, so if you see a poor review, you can be sure that contractor did something really bad, to make the customer exert the energy of writing and publishing a bad review. Social media is a double edge sword for many businesses, and it is no different in the home improvement industry as well. The marketing benefits of advertising on social media brings more customers, however a bad review can kill your business as well. To avoid bad reviews at MB Construction Company of Salisbury, NC, we simply provide quality installation services, and document our work, by displaying it on our website. Our workers know that every job is a website photo job, so they pay attention to every detail, to give the best possible home improvement service possible.
So no matter which way you go, to do it yourself, or to hire a painting contractor, there is a lot more to take into account then just buying paint and brushes. If your going to do it yourself, I would recommend going to one of the free classes on painting at the home improvement warehouses like Lowe's, and Home Depot. We hope this blog post has been informative for readers looking to do home improvements this year with spring cleaning. So if your looking for a home improvement contractor in the Charlotte NC area, then give MB Construction Company a call at 704-267-7763 or visit us on the web at: http://www.mbconstructioncompany.com
Please comment and discuss painting tips. We also encourage readers to leave ideas for blog post topics. If we don't provide the service, it doesn't mean we can't research it, and get a good, general information knowledge of the home improvement service.
Authored by:
Brad Basinger
MB Construction Company
224 Prescott Drive
Salisbury, NC 28144
Phone: 704-267-7763
Website: http://www.mbconstructioncompany.com
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