Painting and coatings estimating, CSI Division 09 finishes, is the business of pricing the surface prep, the primers, the finish coats, and the specialty coatings that protect and decorate a building. You work from the finish schedule, the wall and ceiling plans, the elevation drawings, and the specification sections that govern the systems. Every wall, every ceiling, every floor, every door, and every piece of trim has a system, a number of coats, a coverage rate, and a labor unit. Painting looks like the simple trade, and it is the one most often underbid because the surface area is easy to underestimate and the prep is easy to skip on the estimate.
What You Are Estimating
Division 09 covers paint, coatings, wallcoverings, and specialty finishes. You are estimating three major cost groups. The first is field applied paint: the primers and the finish coats on walls, ceilings, doors, frames, trim, structural steel, and exposed duct. The second is specialty coatings: intumescent fireproofing on structural steel, elastomeric coatings on stucco and exterior walls, epoxy floor coatings in mechanical rooms and kitchens, and antimicrobial coatings in healthcare. The third is wallcoverings: vinyl, fabric, and acoustical wall systems that are hung, not painted.
On a typical commercial job the wall and ceiling areas come off the finish plan and the elevations, the floor areas come off the floor plans, the door and frame counts come off the door schedule, and the structural steel comes off the structural drawings. You also carry the surface prep, the patching, the priming of new substrates, the masking, the protection of adjacent work, and the touch up after the other trades finish.
Units and Workflow
Painting quantities are square feet, square yards, lineal feet, and counts. Walls and ceilings are measured in square feet, with the openings deducted or the openings measured separately depending on the spec. Floors are measured in square feet for coatings and square yards for carpet and tile. Trim, base, and edge work are measured in linear feet. Doors, frames, and panels are counted and labored as assemblies.
The workflow runs substrate by substrate. You start with the ceilings because they are the largest area and the easiest to measure off the floor plans. You take the walls, including the partitions, the elevator shafts, and the stair walls. You take the trim and the doors from the door schedule. You take the structural steel from the beam and column list. You take the floors last. Each substrate carries a system, a primer, a number of finish coats, and a labor unit by coat.
Step by Step Estimate
First, set up the estimate with your labor rate and your labor units. Paint labor comes from the PDCA manual or your own shop average by system, by substrate, and by coat. A wall that takes one coat of primer and two coats of finish carries three labor units, not one. The labor rate comes from your shop average painter rate plus burden.
Second, do the takeoff. Measure the walls and the ceilings off the plans, deduct the openings where the spec requires it, and tag every area by system. Count the doors and frames off the door schedule and tag them by type. Measure the trim in linear feet. List the structural steel by the beam and the column. Third, apply the coverage rate. Every product has a coverage rate in square feet per gallon, and the primer and the finish coats carry different rates. Multiply the area by the number of coats and divide by the coverage to get the gallons. Fourth, apply the labor. Multiply each area by the labor unit and the labor rate. Fifth, price the material. Sixth, load the spreads: labor burden, lifts and scaffolding, protection of adjacent work, cleanup, and your overhead and profit.
Where the Money Goes
On a commercial painting package the labor runs 55 to 70 percent of the installed cost, which is the highest labor share of any trade. The material is a smaller line, commonly 25 to 35 percent, and the material is where the coverage rate and the waste factor hide. A paint specified at 350 square feet per gallon that actually covers 250 because of the substrate texture will blow the material line item, and a wrong coverage rate also blows the labor because the painters slow down on a substrate that drinks paint.
Surface prep is the hidden cost. New drywall needs a primer and a touch prime at the joints, the patches, and the nail heads. Existing walls need scraping, patching, and spot priming. Structural steel needs abrasive blasting or power tool cleaning before the intumescent fireproofing goes on, and the prep on the steel is often more expensive than the fireproofing itself. Protection of adjacent work is a real cost on renovation because every floor, every door, and every window has to be masked and covered, and the removal of that protection is labor too.
Common Mistakes
The first mistake is underestimating the surface area. The floor plan gives you the floor square footage, but the wall area is the perimeter times the height, and a corridor with a low ceiling and a lot of doors can carry more wall area than the floor plan suggests. The second mistake is forgetting the number of coats. A three coat system is three labor units and three material applications, and pricing it as one coat cuts the line item by two thirds.
The third mistake is underpricing the prep. Drywall prep, steel prep, and existing wall prep are separate labor units and separate material lines, and they are easy to skip when the estimate is built off the floor area alone. The fourth mistake is ignoring the coverage rate on rough substrates. The fifth mistake is forgetting the lifts and the scaffolding. A ceiling job in a lobby needs a lift, and the lift rental, the move in, and the move out are line items. The sixth mistake is not carrying the touch up. After the other trades finish, the painter comes back to touch up the nicks and the scratches, and that labor has to be in the bid.
Putting It Together
A clean painting estimate is built substrate by substrate, coat by coat. You take the finish plan for the systems, the floor plans for the walls and the ceilings, the door schedule for the doors, the structural drawings for the steel, and the specifications for the number of coats and the coverage rates. You measure the area, apply the coverage, count the coats, apply the labor, price the material, and load the spreads. When the bid number lands you compare it to the last similar job by the cost per square foot of floor area and the cost per square foot of wall area. If the number is out of line you go back to the wall takeoff and the coat count before you submit. Painting is the trade where the labor is the bid and the prep is the labor, and the takeoff is where most painting subs make or lose the job.