First Job Continued...

CTamer said:

Thank you everyone. Tmrrptr, you have to realize by now that I wasn't asking for personal salary information, tax returns, financial statements from anyone in here. I was only looking for a ballpark amount. I see competitors in here exchanging information all of the time, so I really didn't think my question was out of line. It's a shame you feel that way. I am serious about my business, and want to do whatever it takes to succeed.....but sometimes, I need the advice of others who have been doing this in order for me to get together my budget for the year.

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If you know what you are doing in painting and contracting, you shouldn’t need to how long it took to start making money in painting, you can make money right from the beginning as long as you don’t under sell yourself or employees, charge what you need to make a good profit, I was probably $20,000 to low on my first year of painting, but I didn’t know what I didn’t know.
With painter boards like this one you should be making maximum profits by the second year with all the info ya can pick up on here.
My best advise is to charge per man hr not sqft and bill out your painters at least $35.00 ph per painter.

You are budgeting well for advertisement that is a must and really never stops, word of mouth doesn’t work like it did 20 years ago, your add will get as many calls as one that has been in the same publication for 5 years, No home owner looks at the painter adds for years before they decide they had seen your add in there for sooo many years it is time to call this paint co, the average H.O probably looks for a painter 3 or 4 times in there life time, and when they are ready they call what ever paint co that caught their eye for some reason.
IMHO BEN

You probably are. If you bid square foot and the job takes longer to do that your square foot price allows, you lost money. If you look at a job, plan how many hours it will take, and price from there, you are being more realistic, but again, if you take longer than you expected, you lost again.

Estimating is not an exact science. I wish we all could be as lucky as ProWallGuy was when he started out. Since you are just starting out, I would keep detailed and accurate records of all your jobs. Among other things, list how many man hours it took to complete the project, how much time you had in prep, painting, assembling materials and equipment, and anything else pertinent to the job. Also record amount material is used, the price of materials, equipment rental (if any), and any other material such as tape, masking paper, etc. so you can determine what each job actually cost you and its profit. Also make note of the work was done so that for future projects you can refer back to these figures to give you a fairly accurate price on what it will cost you to do the job.

As you gain experience, you will be able to walk in and look at a room and know exactly how long it'll take to prep and paint it. In biggest thing now is just trying to determine the number of hours will take you to complete a project, figure out what to you and your partner need per hour to live on, add in overhead and profit, and go from there.