The following questions, in no particular order, is by no means the only questions to ask builders. The following have potential for a drastic impact on labor. Price new construction accordingly. The details often missed when pricing off blueprints.
1. Are there bi-fold doors?
2. When will electrical hardware be installed? (outlets and switches should not be installed prior to priming walls).
3. Is there electric and water? Where is it located? Is the water located in the house?
4. Are the ceilings painted? Are the ceilings smooth or textured?
5. Do you pre-clean the house? To what extent? Are the floors vac'd?
6. How many coats of paint do they want on walls? Explain Good, Better, Behr (Best)*.
7. Is there any crownmold? How many linear feet? How tall is the crown and how high from the floor?
8. Which building products are raw, composite, (MDF, bare wood).
9. Are closets painted? Are they bare drywall or textured with mud?
10. How long will the trim carpenter need?
11. What if anything is painted beyond the basement door? Walls? Stairs?
12. What style of trim? (standard or fancy) How wide and tall?
13. Will flooring be installed prior to painting? If not, will shoe be installed afterwards?
14. How many wall colors?
15. How high are the ceilings?
16. Who is responsible for making wall patches? When will it occur and will it occur just once? Find out how many times you are expected to touch up the house.
17. Are the windows trimmed with casing or wrapped in drywall? If wrapped in drywall, who is responsible for cleaning the mud off the vinyl windows? Who caulks the windows?
18. If the windows are wrapped, do they have sills? Are the sills MDF or bare wood? What style?
19. How many hours would you like included for touch-ups?
20. Will I be working around other trades or do you allow painter time? How long?
21. What is the scope of exterior painting?
22. How many entry doors? Are they metal or fiberglas doors? If fiberglas, is it stained? One side or both sides?
23. What areas get shoe? How many colors? Paint or stain? Finish shoe mold before installation or finish in place next to flooring? Any shoe over tile and grout? Will the shoe in tile areas get painted or stained?
24. Will the flooring (if installed) be protected?
25. Ask about any other trim other than door casings and baseboard such as columns, built-ins, etc.
26. If the house has handrails, find out if they get stained or painted. Some houses have all white trim and stained handrails.
* Ask about payment terms, tell them yours. You may want to bill one third on prime day.
Does the tile guy slop on the walls and clean his mess up?
And if you forget every question here, make sure to remember #19!
Kevin, you nailed that one!
#19 if painters are not very clear about touch ups, can turn into 3 or more days (trips) of touching up a house. The important thing too is #16 about making wall patches. Our policy is that we do not make wall patches. The builder or drywaller makes wall patches (repairs). We will however paint the wall patches one time. How many times we touch up needs to be outlined. If its one time, then we make it clear that patches should be made prior to applying the second coat on the walls.
Having a clear policy about wall patches is important so the builder is not asking you to touch up a patch every time they come across one. See, Charging to make wall patches.
What happens when the customer has 9 wall colors and all 9 colors have wall patches? See, Charging for color changes.
Just handed my first 26 questions to my potentially 1st set of New Construction projects. Until now I have done mostly repaints/remodels.
These are the answers I got back on those questions. Most of them I like. Except mudwork.
These places will average 2600 livable square foot. 9 foot ceilings and 1 tray ceiling in master. Trim was 4-5 inch on the floor.
Now I just got to figure out a price. This is the part that worries me the most. Not really sure whats common in my area. Most of my pricing now is Mid-High with the current work I have been doing.