Two bids for the same house can differ by four thousand dollars and both say “two coats.” The difference is washing, scraping, caulking and priming — and it is the only reason one job still looks right in year six. Ours is written down before you sign anything.
Siding is washed at about 1,200 psi — high enough to take off chalk and pollen, low enough not to drive water up behind the boards. Then it sits 48 hours. Painting a damp wall is how a coat lets go two summers later.
Every failing edge comes back to something solid, then gets feathered so you cannot read the repair through the finish. Spot-scraping only where it is obvious is the single most common shortcut in this trade.
Urethane caulk at butt joints, window and door flanges, and trim returns. Bare wood gets an oil bonding primer, tannin-heavy wood gets a stain blocker, and patched drywall gets primed so it does not flash under the topcoat.
100% acrylic, two full coats on the body, and every sprayed coat back-rolled or brushed into the surface. We check wet film thickness with a gauge as we go, because coverage is what the warranty is actually about.
We are not the low bid and we will not pretend otherwise. Here is where the money goes on our side, and where it usually comes out on the other, so you can ask the other company about their column directly.
How to use this: ask any painter to put the prep in writing — wash pressure, what gets scraped, where caulk goes, which primer, how many coats. A company that does the work will write it down in ten minutes. That question costs you nothing and it sorts the field faster than any review page.
Starting figures assume an occupied Denver home of about 1,800 square feet. Your number comes back written, itemised by surface, within two business days of the walkthrough.
We work room by room so you keep the rest of the house. Furniture centred and covered, floors papered at the edges, and everything back where it was each evening.
The full spec above, on a fixed price. Colorado sun and hail are hard on a south and west elevation, so those get the closest look during the walkthrough.
Doors come off, get numbered, and are sprayed flat in our shop where dust does not land in the finish. Boxes are done in place with the kitchen sealed off.
Offices, clinics, restaurants and unit turns, painted after hours or between tenants. We price per square foot, invoice monthly, and carry the certificates your property manager will ask for.
Nobody in this trade publishes these, which is why three bids take you two weeks. These are our real starting rates in the Denver metro. A written estimate confirms your number against the actual walls.
| Surface | Starting price | What that number includes |
|---|---|---|
| Interior room, walls | $410 | Fill, sand, spot-prime, two coats, cut in by hand. Based on a 12 × 12 room with an 8-foot ceiling.Ceiling adds $140 · trim and one door adds $190 |
| Whole interior repaint | $5,400 | Walls, ceilings, trim and doors throughout an 1,800 sq ft home, worked room by room.Usually 6 to 9 working days |
| Exterior, full spec | $7,900 | Wash, dry, scrape, caulk, prime, two body coats and one trim coat on two-story lap siding.Stucco from $6,400 · brick from $8,600 |
| Cabinets | $115 / door | Doors sprayed off-site, boxes in place, bonding primer and two catalysed coats.Drawer fronts $65 each · boxes included |
| Trim and doors only | $6.50 / ft | Baseboard, casing and crown, caulked, filled and two-coated.Interior doors $95 each, both faces and edges |
| Deck or fence | $3.10 / sq ft | Washed, sanded where it is furred, and two coats of stain or solid colour.Railings and spindles quoted per foot of run |
| Commercial interior | $0.95 / sq ft | Occupied space, walls, two coats, worked after hours. Monthly invoicing.Ceilings and soffits $1.45 / sq ft |
Paint is included at these prices, in a mid-tier 100% acrylic line. Moving up to the premium line adds about 6% to a job and buys you better colour retention on a south wall — we will tell you honestly when it is worth it and when it is not. Colour consultation is one hour, free, and you keep the samples. There is no charge to have us out, and no deposit until the first morning of work.
Photographs show the kind of finish each scope is written to reach.
Two previous repaints had been sprayed over chalked, unwashed siding, so the new film never bonded and came off in sheets on the hot side of the house. We took that elevation back to bare wood in the worst bays, primed it, and gave the whole house the standard two coats. The other three sides only needed the normal spec.
Deep colours over light walls usually get sold as “three coats.” A grey-tinted primer under two finish coats covers better, costs less, and does not build a film thick enough to show every roller lap. Same result, one day shorter.
Nine rooms in eight days, one or two at a time, with the office always finished and back in service before the next room opened. Furniture centred and covered nightly, and no plastic sheeting left across a doorway at 6pm.
The manager needed each unit back inside 48 hours of key handover, with a predictable invoice. One crew, one colour, walls and trim, and a photo set per unit so nothing was disputed against the deposit.
Four crews, all working within about a 25-minute drive of the shop on Brighton Boulevard. Ask us about Fort Collins or the Springs and we will say no, then give you the name of a company we would use ourselves.
Acrylic needs the surface above about 50°F and rising while it cures, and Denver nights drop below that early in the autumn. A company that offers to paint your siding in November is telling you something about the rest of their spec. Interiors and cabinets we book straight through the winter, and that is when the schedule is shortest.
“They were the third bid and the highest by $2,100. Theo walked me around the house and showed me where the last crew had painted over chalk. Four years on the west wall still looks like the day they left.”
“The estimate was four pages and listed the primer by name. The invoice matched it to the dollar. I have hired a lot of trades and that has happened maybe twice.”
“They told me my deck did not need repainting yet, and that I should wait a year and spend the money on the trim instead. Then they came back a year later.”
Nobody sits in your kitchen selling. We look, we measure, we write it down, and you read it on your own time.