Painting - professional decorator vs DIY

KateLiana27

Thanks everyone for the great advice. The guy who's been recommended to us is fantastic and does great work - it's just the delay in his start time, and obviously the significant cost, that is making us think twice. We'll most likely have a go in the small bedroom and see what happens - if it's traumatic we can always get the professional in afterwards!

Thanks again for the very helpful tips

terryyrret

If you have the money spare........pay the decorator. Put the average DIY finish next to the average professional finish and the dfference is always glaringly obvious. The professional finish will also be achieved far, far quicker.
Its like comparing a taxi driver with an F1driver..............however much 'Mr & Mrs toolhead' may try to convince you otherwise

Jaynne

I suspect that the intervening two years was enough time to get the job done even if it wasn't by a "pro"

nickj_2

you could always strip the paper yourselves , you may find the walls might need re-lining , if they don't then all the remaining paste needs to be removed from the walls . this is something anyone can do , and would save a large amount of time and money , then if you wanted to you could get the painter in to paint

Leif

Something tells me that terryyrret is a professional decorator/trade.

Melaniep101

My husband always says "if you can p1ss, you can paint"! Not sure that's entirely true, but you could always try one of the rooms yourselves to see how you get on.

As said by previous posters, it's all in the preparation, the actual painting isn'nt that difficult. Make sure you mask off the skirtings, archetraves etc, get decent quality paint and rollers/brushes and you should be fine. We've decorated our house, top to bottom ourselves, and I'm really happy with it. I'm so fussy though, I don't think I would be able to let a decorator do it!

Wallpaper stripping is pretty boring, but easy enough with a wallpaper stripper, and even hanging wallpaper isn't too bad once you get the hang of it (see what I did there!).

Hope that helps.

nickj_2

Melaniep101 wrote: »

My husband always says "if you can p1ss, you can paint"! Not sure that's entirely true, but you could always try one of the rooms yourselves to see how you get on.

As said by previous posters, it's all in the preparation, the actual painting isn'nt that difficult. Make sure you mask off the skirtings, archetraves etc, get decent quality paint and rollers/brushes and you should be fine. We've decorated our house, top to bottom ourselves, and I'm really happy with it. I'm so fussy though, I don't think I would be able to let a decorator do it!

Wallpaper stripping is pretty boring, but easy enough with a wallpaper stripper, and even hanging wallpaper isn't too bad once you get the hang of it (see what I did there!).

Hope that helps.

that struictly is true , if you can hold a paint brush then technically -yes you can paint , however it's knowing what to paint when- preparation that is just as important , i have a customer who's 8 yr old house 's exterior paintwork is all falling off as the preparation and application of paint was't done right ,proabaly bodged by the builder who built it by the looks of things , it's going to cost around £10k to put right as all of it needs to be stripped off and starting again -:(