External house painting quote

Albermarle

Just to finish off this thread as the job is now done.

Job seemed to have been done properly. I was there most of the time and a lot of the initial work was on preparation, which was a good sign. They had to use quite a lot of filler and actually replace some wood in a couple of cases. Three coats on exterior woodwork, two on the masonry - all Dulux weathershield. Also painted the metal gutters and downpipes from the roof, and the plastic gutters/downpipes lower down. Tidied up properly and cleaned all paint splashes from glass. So a good job.

However only took two people five days ( not three people), although there was one extra person there one day. To be fair they did put in full days ( 8am until 4pm) with only short breaks and worked hard.

So probably in the end, even the reduced price of £4200, paid partly in cash, was still a bit 'toppy' , even for the South East. However at least it is all done, and should not need doing again for quite a few years.

[Deleted User]

Fair play on getting the £500 off. For the South East, £4.5k for that amount of work is a decent result, especially since you didn't have to go down the sketchy "cash in hand" route to get it.

People underestimate how much of a pain 15-year-old timber is. Painting the render is the easy bit, but prepping old wooden fascias and a fiddly front door takes ages if they actually do it properly (sanding, priming, multiple undercoats). Plus, bridging over a glass roof safely without cracking a pane isn't cheap or easy.

I just ran your specs through a calculator out of curiosity, and the South East average for a job with that much high-prep timber and access issues sits between £4,300 and £5,100. So you're right in the sweet spot.

Good luck with it, just make sure they don't rush the prep work once the sun finally comes out!