Painting & decorating
Painting, with the preparation actually done
Wash, fill, sand, caulk, prime, then finish coats. The preparation is the part that decides whether it still looks like this in four Michigan winters, and it is the part that gets skipped.
Why are painting quotes so far apart for the same room?
Because most of a painting price is preparation and labour, not paint, and preparation is the easiest thing to leave out of a number without the customer being able to see it. A wash, filling, sanding, caulking and priming is most of the day; two coats over the top of whatever is already there is not. This is also the clearest example on this whole site of two prices for one trade: a make-ready touch-up between tenants and a two-storey exterior repaint are both "painting" and they are a fiftyfold difference apart. Both figures are published below, side by side, rather than averaged into one that is wrong for everybody.
- Kinds of work on this page
- 1
- Invoiced jobs behind them
- 17
- Case studies
- 3
- Towns with work on record
- 3
What this actually covers
Taken from the scopes on our own invoices rather than from a list of services, so it is the work as it was actually bought.
Interior & Exterior Painting
Painting with the preparation done properly — wash, fill, sand, caulk, prime, then finish coats.
- Full interior repaints — walls, ceilings, trim and doors
- Exterior power wash, prime and finish coats including two-storey access
- Trim, fascia and garage-trim painting
- Deck and porch staining and painting
- Touch-up and make-ready painting between tenants
What it costs, and what that is based on
Painting is quoted per room or per elevation as a lump sum, which is how every painting quote this company has issued has been written bar one. That one priced walls and ceilings by the square foot, and because it is a single document it is shown below labelled as exactly that and nothing more — one quote is not a rate card, however precise the decimals look.
Every figure below came out of an invoice this company sent between October 2025 and September 2026, and it is printed with the number of jobs behind it. Where the record is too thin or belongs to one customer, that is said instead of averaged — a price nobody can check is worth nothing to you.
Interior & Exterior Painting
- Property-manager work order
$92.50–$172.93
The middle half of 10 invoiced jobs across 3 different customers. The median was $100 and the full spread was $41.77 to $1,600. Invoiced between March 2026 and August 2026.
Labour only — materials on top, at cost, with the receipt.
- Homeowner, quoted project
$1,100–$2,515
The middle half of 7 invoiced jobs across 6 different customers. The median was $1,683.22 and the full spread was $400 to $5,373. Invoiced between October 2025 and August 2026.
Labour only — materials on top, at cost, with the receipt.
Derived on 2026-09-11 from 337 QuickBooks invoices covering 709 line items, 289 jobs and 84 customer quote documents. Property-manager figures are labour billed against a rate negotiated with that manager; homeowner figures are quoted fixed prices. The two are never blended, because the same trade appears in both at up to a fiftyfold difference and an average of them would be wrong for everybody.
The terms, in full
There is no charge for turning up, looking, or coming back.
Coming out
No charge
No trip charge, no call-out minimum, no diagnostic fee, and no charge for a return visit. Attendance and diagnosis of what you reported are included in the job price. True on all 84 written quotes this company has issued.
Materials
At cost, no markup
Supplied at cost with the receipt attached, and not discounted either — there is no margin in them to discount. Across eleven months of invoices, materials are $10,080 of $210,693 billed on labour-and-materials lines: 4.8%.
Anything outside the quote
$65 an hour plus materials
And only with your approval, in writing, before it is done. A fixed price is not a promise that nothing will be found behind a wall — it is a promise that you decide about it before it is billed rather than after.
Warranty
1 year on all labour
Two years on PVC trim installation and on flooring, stair and trim-joint work. Materials you supply yourself are not covered — our work on them is.
Payment
50% / 50%
Half on signing, which secures the date and buys the materials, and half on completion. A labour-only quote carries no deposit at all, because a deposit exists to purchase materials and that quote has none.
First-time customers
10% off labour
Applied to labour only, because materials are already at cost. Repeat and loyalty customers get the same 10%.
Where we stop
A contractor who writes down what they will not do is worth more than one who says yes to everything. These are the boundaries our own quotes already carry, in the same words.
- Lead paint: on a house built before 1978, disturbing paint is regulated work. We will say so at the walk-through rather than after sanding has started.
- Painting over a moisture problem is not a repair. Where readings show a wall is still wet, the work is rescheduled and nothing is coated until it is dry — and there is no charge for the return visit.
Finished and invoiced
3 jobs of this kind, written up in full
Each one names its QuickBooks invoice number. Nothing on this site is a quote that was accepted and never done — the photographs of those are excellent and they are a portfolio of work we have not carried out.
Towns with painting & decorating on the books
We do every service on this site across all ten towns. These are the ones with completed, invoiced work of this kind behind them, which is a different and more useful claim.
Questions we get asked about this
- Do you supply the paint, and is it marked up?
- We supply it if you want us to, at cost, with the receipt attached and no markup on it. Plenty of customers buy their own instead, especially on a larger project, and that is shown on the quote at no charge rather than quietly removed from the labour figure.
- Can you paint a two-storey exterior?
- Yes. Ladder and staging access for two-storey work is already priced into exterior jobs we have invoiced, including a full power-wash, prime and finish on a house of roughly sixteen hundred square feet of siding.
- Do you do make-ready painting between tenants?
- Regularly, and it is billed completely differently from a homeowner repaint — as labour on a work order rather than as a quoted project. Both numbers are on this page so neither audience reads the other one and thinks it is theirs.
- Do you charge a call-out fee or a trip charge?
- No — and no diagnostic fee and no charge for a return visit either. Attendance and diagnosis of the items you reported are included in the job price, and there is no minimum charge and no call-out minimum on any of the 84 written quotes this company has issued. Where a job is far enough out to need several days of round trips, a mobilisation figure is agreed with you in writing before anything starts, or the schedule is compressed into fewer longer days instead.
- What happens if the job turns out to be bigger than the quote?
- It becomes a written change order, priced and agreed before the work goes ahead, and it appears on the invoice by name. Anything outside the written scope is $65 an hour plus materials, and only with your approval — that rate is printed on every quote this company issues.
- Do you mark up materials?
- No. Materials are supplied at cost with the receipt attached, and the invoice record says so rather than the marketing: across eleven months, materials are $10,080 of $210,693 billed on labour-and-materials lines, which is 4.8% of it. On larger projects plenty of customers buy the materials themselves, and those are shown on the quote at no charge.
- Are you insured, and do you hold a contractor licence?
- Fully insured, and a W-9 and a certificate of insurance go out with every signed quote without being asked for. On licensing we are direct, because it is the question that matters and the one most trade websites blur: the Michigan residential builder licence is not held and no contractor licence is claimed or implied. Electrical and plumbing work here is repair and like-for-like replacement on what already exists — new circuits, panels, service upgrades, water-heater replacement and anything else requiring a licensed trade is referred out and named as such on the quote.
Need painting & decorating quoting?
Tell us what is wrong and we will come and look — no trip charge, no call-out minimum and no diagnostic fee. You get a fixed price in writing with the exclusions listed as plainly as the inclusions, and materials at cost with the receipts attached.