Painting Tips
Painting Bid Alternates and Unit Prices: How to Price What Might Happen
A bid form usually asks for more than one number. There is the base bid, and then there are boxes for alternates and, on many…
Painting Tips
Painting Bid Exclusions and Clarifications That Hold Up
Every painting bid contains assumptions. The only question is whether they are written down. An exclusion is an assumption made visible, and the difference between…
Painting Tips
How to Respond to a Painting Bid Invitation
An invitation to bid arrives as an email with links, a deadline, and an implication that everyone else already understands the process. Most painters respond…
Painting Tips
The Painting Submittal Package: What Goes In and When
On commercial work you are usually not allowed to open a container until somebody has approved what is in it. The mechanism is the submittal…
Painting Tips
How to Read Painting Specifications Without Getting Caught Out
A specification is the written half of a construction contract, and the painting section of it is where a bid quietly becomes either profitable or…
Painting Tips
How to Read a Room Finish Schedule as a Painter
Of everything in a commercial drawing set, one table decides most of what a painter is being asked to do. It is usually a single…
Painting Tips
Painting Takeoff From Plans: How to Get the Quantities Right
The first commercial bid most painters lose money on is not lost in the field. It is lost at the kitchen table with a set…
Painting Tips
Floor Marking Paint: Setting Out and Traffic
Internal floor marking looks like the simplest work in this batch and is the one most often quoted wrongly. The painting is trivial. The setting…
Painting Tips
Hygienic Wall Coatings: Cleanable and Seamless
Hygienic coatings are specified rather than chosen. Somebody with an inspection regime has decided that a surface must be cleanable to a standard, and the…
Painting Tips
Heat Resistant Paint: Matching the Tier to the Job
Heat resistant coatings are a small category where the failure is immediate and obvious. Ordinary paint on a hot surface discolours, blisters, cracks and burns…