Here are the top questions you want to know how to ask the next painter you hire!
Hello again, Kevin Sillaman with the Ohio Painting Company. I’m one of the owners here in the Dayton area of Ohio. Today, we’re going to answer another question: how to hire a professional painter.
ASK AROUND
First of all, you’re going to ask people, friends and family, of course, for recommendations.
Word of mouth is just a great scenario and almost anything, you know, on how to get somebody, no matter what it is, you know, plumbing, painting, electrician. But here’s a couple of things I want you to keep in mind.
When you’re asking those people, the people that you’re asking, do they have the same quality mindset that you do because your brother in law and his wife might not have the same expectations that you would have in a painter?
DO A SEARCH… GOOGLE IT
It’s as simple as doing a Google search! Once you find a painting contractor or you get a list of names, go on ahead and look online and look at their referrals or look at their references. Google will uncover this quickly for you. What have they had said about them online?
Look at the the pictures that they have and the houses that they’re going to.
Do they emulate your house? Because if they don’t if they’re a smaller or lesser quality, then again, you might not want that particular painter in your home.
USE FACEBOOK COMMUNITIES
Engage in local Facebook pages & groups.
You’ll get a lot of references there and a lot of feedback because instead of just one person, you’ve got a community of people attacking that same question and giving their various input.
You might get multiple answers out of that, but you also might get some answers where somebody had a good experience of a painter and somebody had a bad experience of that same painter.
So that’s another great place to look.
ASK THE PAINT COMPANIES
This is probably my favorite, and I’m going to throw a name out here. But Sherwin-Williams, let’s just say they’ve got a reputation to hold. So if you go in there and you ask behind the counter, if you ask one of the managers or one of the employees there, if he would have a reference for you, for a painter, he’s going to give you three cards.
The reason that those three cards are important is because he is going to know that those particular painters come in a lot, and whenever they come in a lot, they get to know them better. So they get to know their personality, what type of paint they use etc. They also generally know what happens on the outside with any complaints, about how many they might have throughout the year, or how many they’ve had actually throughout their time of going to that particular store.
So there’s a lot of really good material there that you can grab from at Sherwin-Williams that is going to help you make that decision. And again, then once you get those cards, you can even go back to your house, look at those online and see what other people were saying.
Also think about throwing those out into your family, your community Facebook page and see how those are doing.
BOOK A VISIT
Once you’ve figured all that out, you’ll want to start calling those contractors and then you’re going to start scheduling the time for them to come over because you might find the you know, what everybody said is a great painter.
This seems to be just one of my pet peeves…
If you’ve got an appointment with somebody and a lot of times they don’t show up, but if they’re late, have they called?
That might seem simple, but it’s attention to detail that you’re going to want somebody to have that’s coming inside your house to do painting that needs to be detail oriented.
Hope that made sense?
How do you feel about the person?
What kind of a vibe did you get?
Once they’re at your house, they’ve come in, you’re showing them the job.
How do you feel about them?
What kind of a vibe did you get?
Was it a good one? Was it an okay one? Was it an informative one?
Did they have a lot of knowledge about things that you would never have even thought about?
That’s really key because somebody like that, they’re going to be a pretty good painter if they’re picking things out and showing you things that you didn’t even know were a part of your house.
That pretty much brings us to the end, but you should be able to find the right contractor with that information there.
I hope you’ve enjoyed it.
Hope you have a great day and God bless.
And we’ll talk to you later. 🙂
– Kevin
