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My experience is a careful amateur painter is 1000% better than an average professional. Professionals are certainly a lot faster, but if you look carefully at

My experience is a careful amateur painter is 1000% better than an average professional. Professionals are certainly a lot faster, but if you look carefully at their work it is in the main very shoddy. If you want a good result don’t skimp on the tools. Buy good quality brushes, rollers, filler, throws and paint. Also buy an edger to cut in the walls and ceilings. One final tip buy some of the disposable plastic liners for the roller tray so you don’t have to spend time washing out the tray at the end of the day.

skate22 9y ago
Quality cleaning solution and sand paper so your high quality paint doesnt peel 2 years later.
- danieltillett 9y ago
  Yes I agree especially the cleaning part. The kitchen and the rooms close to the kitchen it is critical to clean and clean and clean. The prep should take longer than the painting. On the sand paper front make sure to spend money there. Cheap sandpaper last 2 nanoseconds and does a terrible job.
pluma 9y ago
Not sure where you're from but in Germany there are industry standards professionals have to adhere to. Sure, there are sloppy professionals like in any other job too but if they adhere to the industry standards, the result will be pretty much what you expect and they're not allowed to take shortcuts that result in lower quality work. On the other hand, coming from a country that takes its trades extremely serious, I was shocked about what I observed every time I visited the UK. It seems the expectations vary drastically between different countries (though I'm sure there are quality professionals in the UK too).
- danieltillett 9y ago
  I am in the land of the shonky tradesman - Australia. Not only are they massively overpaid, they make the UK tradesmen look like gods.
- hoopladler 9y ago
  It doesn't make too much sense to do quality work in the UK, on the whole. House price / rent value is basically dependent on location. Money spent on fitting is generally wasted. There are a lot of great craftsmen in the UK, but they tend to work on a subset of jobs - restoration, passion projects, really high-end stuff. PS: This is also a direct result of ever-rising house prices. If land/house prices are consistently rising, it often makes more sense to let lots stay empty, rather than building (which is always a massive risk). It also makes sense to do any repair or upkeep work as cheaply as possible - since in a rising market, the only way you can lose money is by expensive development costs.
  - pluma 9y ago
    That explains a lot. Thank you.
ska 9y ago
I think there are two things at work here. 1 - there are very good professionals, but they aren't cheap and have all the work they need 2 - an amateur can always decide to take economically irrational amounts of time on a project; a professional can't. So the result is that as a careful amateur you can end up with a job you probably wouldn't be able to convince yourself to pay for. We can probably all agree that the worst case is the careless amateur....
- marcosdumay 9y ago
  > economically irrational I am not sure that description is apt. Underdelivering is only rational for the painter because the client won't be on the market long enough to gather sufficient information. The client is getting cheated, and it creates a lemons market, the fact that it is a Nash equilibrium does not make avoiding the entire thing irrational. And the entire thing has parallels on software development...
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - ska 9y ago
    I meant it in a similar sense to that in which some hobbies are often irrational if you consider them only for market value. I probably could have chosen a better term. An amateur painter will often spend far more time than any reasonable estimation of the market value of that job would justify. Part of this is lack of efficiency and experience, but another part is doing things with sharply diminishing returns. For example, you might apply expensive techniques to inexpensive materials, in a way that would not make for a viable business. Put it another way - amateurs can easily arrive at a finished job (of painting, in this case) that they would never be able to convince themselves to pay market rate for. This is irrational in certain restricted senses. For what it's worth I don't believe that "lemons market" is accurate for painters in general, but I'm guessing there is a segment of it that meets your description.
    - philipodonnell 9y ago

skate22 9y ago

Quality cleaning solution and sand paper so your high quality paint doesnt peel 2 years later.

danieltillett 9y ago
Yes I agree especially the cleaning part. The kitchen and the rooms close to the kitchen it is critical to clean and clean and clean. The prep should take longer than the painting. On the sand paper front make sure to spend money there. Cheap sandpaper last 2 nanoseconds and does a terrible job.

pluma 9y ago

Not sure where you're from but in Germany there are industry standards professionals have to adhere to. Sure, there are sloppy professionals like in any other job too but if they adhere to the industry standards, the result will be pretty much what you expect and they're not allowed to take shortcuts that result in lower quality work. On the other hand, coming from a country that takes its trades extremely serious, I was shocked about what I observed every time I visited the UK. It seems the expectations vary drastically between different countries (though I'm sure there are quality professionals in the UK too).

danieltillett 9y ago
I am in the land of the shonky tradesman - Australia. Not only are they massively overpaid, they make the UK tradesmen look like gods.
hoopladler 9y ago
It doesn't make too much sense to do quality work in the UK, on the whole. House price / rent value is basically dependent on location. Money spent on fitting is generally wasted. There are a lot of great craftsmen in the UK, but they tend to work on a subset of jobs - restoration, passion projects, really high-end stuff. PS: This is also a direct result of ever-rising house prices. If land/house prices are consistently rising, it often makes more sense to let lots stay empty, rather than building (which is always a massive risk). It also makes sense to do any repair or upkeep work as cheaply as possible - since in a rising market, the only way you can lose money is by expensive development costs.
- pluma 9y ago
  That explains a lot. Thank you.

ska 9y ago

I think there are two things at work here. 1 - there are very good professionals, but they aren't cheap and have all the work they need 2 - an amateur can always decide to take economically irrational amounts of time on a project; a professional can't. So the result is that as a careful amateur you can end up with a job you probably wouldn't be able to convince yourself to pay for. We can probably all agree that the worst case is the careless amateur....

marcosdumay 9y ago
> economically irrational I am not sure that description is apt. Underdelivering is only rational for the painter because the client won't be on the market long enough to gather sufficient information. The client is getting cheated, and it creates a lemons market, the fact that it is a Nash equilibrium does not make avoiding the entire thing irrational. And the entire thing has parallels on software development...
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- ska 9y ago
  I meant it in a similar sense to that in which some hobbies are often irrational if you consider them only for market value. I probably could have chosen a better term. An amateur painter will often spend far more time than any reasonable estimation of the market value of that job would justify. Part of this is lack of efficiency and experience, but another part is doing things with sharply diminishing returns. For example, you might apply expensive techniques to inexpensive materials, in a way that would not make for a viable business. Put it another way - amateurs can easily arrive at a finished job (of painting, in this case) that they would never be able to convince themselves to pay market rate for. This is irrational in certain restricted senses. For what it's worth I don't believe that "lemons market" is accurate for painters in general, but I'm guessing there is a segment of it that meets your description.
  - philipodonnell 9y ago