Regarding home improvement projects such as painting, most Singaporeans think that DIY means they won’t have to spend money. But there are always pros for hiring the professional painters to do the job for you. This article will endeavour to contrast the respective advantages and disadvantages of doing do-it-yourself painting and hiring a painting service in Singapore based on three factors only – time, money and quality.
Time Investment
DIY Painting
- Learning Curve: Even if you have not painted before then you will need to learn all about how to prepare for painting, painting procedures, how to select paint types and painting finishes. This initial time investment could be substantial and that is why many organisations have realized the importance of outsourcing this strategic activity.
- Shopping for Supplies: All the paint, brushes, rollers, trays, plastic tarps, paint thinner etc meant for this kind of work have to be procured personally from various stores. This also takes time.
- Prepping & Masking Off Areas: There will always be considerable time spent on loose paint removal, hole/crack filling in walls, surface preparation, trimming/switch masking – all painting preparation steps.
- Managing the Actual Painting: Since I am an amateur on painting, the painting job will take longer time as most of the real painting skills take shorter time than amateurs and are equipped with special painting tools. It takes a long time to do it.
- Clean Up: Cleaning up after painting – washing brush, throwing away paint cans etc. bring additional time into a total time spent.
Professional Painting
- Assessment & Quotes: Most esteemed professional painters invest their time in assessment visits and giving quotes at no cost, which means you won’t need to do a thorough research.
- Prep Work Expertise: Organizations will deploy the precise specialized crew, and the right tools to prep your surfaces in the most efficient fashion.
- Painting Done Quickly: Professional team can paint normal sized apartment in one to two days of work efficiently provided that the painters have had experience with painting all kinds of homes and have the proper equipment and tools as well as physically built for the task.
- No Clean Up Work: It will be accomplish by the professional and all the cleaning will be done to leave the site clean. This saves much of your time and is a significant portion of the day.
Cost Savings
DIY Painting
- Surface Preparing Materials & Tools: Paint cost is always constant but other tools at use such as sand papers, spackling, tapes, tarpaulins,brushes etc. can turn out to be costly.
- Mistakes can be Costly: Painting is not very easy and for an amateur painter, he can easily mess up and make paint a surface more than once. Revisiting a project means having to buy new paint to complete the new work that has to be done.
Professional Painting
- Bulk Purchase Discounts: The painting companies who are established procure paint, supplies and various other items in bulk directly from manufactures/Hardware store for very cheap rates. Savings are then passed to clients.
- No Redo Costs: Unlike paint sprayer newbies who may mess up the work, requiring another round of painting costing lots of cash, experts do it correctly, with no need for redoing.
- Labor Convenience has Value: In addition to the time you save from not having to prepare, cleanup, run back to the hardware store etc you also ‘save money’. Taking that into consideration, it can be seen that professionals will cost much less than attempting the move independently.
Quality of Paint Job
DIY Painting
Achieving Consistent Results: For those DIYers who are not very skilled, it is very hard to achieve a nice, even, ‘/by a professional’ finish of the walls without such problems as patches, drips etc.
- Limited Equipment/Expertise: Some forms of specialties like textured patterns, faux finishes, accent walls etc., cannot really be achieved independently by most do-it-your self enthusiasts due to lack of equipment and expertise.
- Difficult for Complex Homes: As for the owners of HDB flats with complex frames/structures around the window or air conditioning unit, the painting preparation and painting intricacy dismisses the very idea of DIY painting.
Professional Painting
- Even Coats & No Drips/Errors: There are no longer messy drips or uneven application, bad cutting-in of edges and other imperfections that only an experienced professional can avoid.
- Specialty & Faux Finishes: Other specialties include textured gravel, metallic, Venetian marble and many more, faux finishes as well, all of which cannot be done by do it yourself.
- Equipment/Expertise for Complex Premises: Such complications are common in most architectural designs and professional painters are conversant with them. They have the right lifting equipment and experience coupled with safety certification – important when working on multiple storey homes.
Therefore the DIY painting may seem to be noble featuring that it could enable people to save some time and costs in the beginning. However, save for prep hours, redo cost resulting from the mistakes, absence of equipment, and the high cost of quality prep – it costs less to hire professional painters for quality paint work and especially where the house is complex to paint. With the exception of carrying out a minor paint repainting work, hiring professional painters and painters services are the best course of action for the most homeowners in Singapore.
