Labour and materials. Some items may be considered PC (Prime Cost) items. These may include scaffolding, boom lifts, travel and accommodation costs, feature walls. Prime cost items are generally paid on invoice for the cost amount.

Labour is about 85% of the cost of painting. There can be a lot of preparation involved in an older home. Ceilings were traditionally made from horse hair and plaster, so care must be taken in sanding and filling them. Too much rigorous sanding can lead to further movement and larger repair areas. I always advise clients with horse hair ceilings that I’ll do minor repairs or it would be better to get a professional plasterer to skim coat the entire ceiling. Replacement of some ceilings is another option, but costly and somewhat destroys the character and history of the space. Why do painting quotes differ so much? There are several factors in costing a job – mainly associated with labour. Wages, superannuation, Public Liability, Workers Compensation, vehicle costs, office expenses and other overheads etc. I run a registered company so there are costs there too. Other painters operate as sole traders so their costs can be considerably lower. Their hourly rate could easily be half of mine. But, they are one-man operations and cannot service clients as quickly as I can with a team of eight tradesmen.

Paint will not dry below 8 degrees centigrade. If you paint below that temperature, the tints start to run out from the surface. So it’s advisable to do all the preparation first thing in the morning until the ambient temperature rises to about 10 degrees. Then follow the sun around the exterior. Interiors on cold days also present similar issues. The room may feel warm enough to paint, but the walls (especially older masonry walls) can be quite cold. And the paint will behave similarly. We use large room heaters in winter but care must be taken to avoid ‘sweating’ on the walls. That is, too much heat creating moisture. Painting above 35 degrees centigrade is also not advisable. The opposite happens here compared to cold weather. Paint dries too quickly, and you can be left with streaks in the finished coat or paint ‘grabbing’ leading to the same result. Metal is another issue. Metal is always colder or hotter than the environment. Roofs cannot be painted later than May or before September in the Central West generally.