When you’re selecting a painter for your home, there are a few questions you need to ask your prospective house painter before they get to work.
It’s important to be working with someone trustworthy and experienced so that your painting project runs smoothly and your home looks great for years to come.
WARNING: Look elsewhere if anyone doesn’t answer correctly to the below questions!
Are You Appropriately Licensed?
This should be the first question you ask a prospective house painter.
In New South Wales a painter must be licenced if they do any residential building work, including painting, valued at more than $5,000 (incl GST) in labour and materials.
Once you confirm that they are licenced, ask for their licence number.
Being certain that they are licenced before they start will protect you from exposure to unqualified and untrained tradespeople, and ensures a safer working environment.
Do You Have Relevant Insurance?
It’s not always something we think of (and hopefully isn’t something you’ll need to worry about!) but it’s important to make sure that your painter has the appropriate insurance. This covers both workers compensation and public liability insurance.
If your painter does not have workers’ compensation insurance, you may be liable for any injuries that occur to the painter or any of their staff while on your property. While precautionary measures are taken by painters to ensure the safety of their workers, you never can be too careful.
It is integral that your chosen painter also has public liability insurance. This will cover anything unforeseen that goes wrong onsite, including: damage to your property in general.
Be certain to confirm the validity of the insurance by requesting a Certificate of Currency prior to engaging the services of a painter.
If the painter you’re planning on working with does not have the relevant insurance, we strongly recommend looking for one that does. This will give you the peace of mind you deserve, for the duration of your project.
How Will You Manage Site Preparation?
Ask your painter how they tackle site preparation (ie filling, patching and under coat painting)?
It’s the old saying “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail” and that is a mantra that anyone with even a hint of professionalism in the decorating industry sticks to without fail.
If the correct preparatory work is not done, the job will not look good and it will not last, it is as simple as that.
Remember to always ask how many coats of paint they use, two coats are a minimum!
If you’re looking for some examples where the right site preparation work has been done, please refer to our project gallery here.