Outsourcing More Home Painting

After getting my home office and our foyer painted, the next project to get our relatively new home the way we want was to make some changes to our master bathroom. The color scheme and decor was not something that appealed to us, but we knew we could make some changes to improve it. The primary things we wanted to do in the near term was take out the wallpaper, paint it, and change out the original lighting and other fixtures.

We first thought we'd try and do it all ourselves as it didn't seem like a big project, but things quickly turned south as we started removing the wallpaper and realized the drywall had never been primed or painted before the wallpaper was put on. Pulling off the wallpaper regardless of technique was taking of one or more layers of the drywall paper - it was a mess! We ended up finding a steamer gave us the most consistent result, but it was still taking off at least the top layer of the drywall paper. We decided to take all the wallpaper off and then did some research online to figure out steps to fix it. We ended up sanding down what was left, applying this Gardz sealer product to seal the paper and then prime the walls.

Coming off our experience of outsourcing the painting of my office, we decided then to outsource the remaining sanding, priming, skimcoating, and painting of the walls and trim for $105 + $10tip (about 8hrs of labor or $14.40/hr ). The results turned out really well and once again feel like outsourcing was the right move given I feel we are currently at our saturation point and looking to outsource more. While I don't mind painting, I'm finding myself more comfortable these days at buying back my time up to $15/hr or so. If I find other opportunities besides painting I may begin to try those areas out as well to give me some additional time - something I am finding all to valuable these days.

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Comments (2)

Enjoy your blog. Came to your site when was doing some research for the carnival fantasy cruise. I to live in Raleigh and am thinking of going on one with the family. Can you refer the painter you used? Thanks

Posted by James | January 31, 2011 9:53 PM

Sure - email me and Ill pass along some info

Posted by 2million | February 2, 2011 5:30 PM