Decorating - we've been quoted £13,750 - please tell me they're taking the Michael?

[KindleMum]

We complete new week on our new house and are getting quotes for work at the moment. The first complete quote has been rather a shock and includes £13,750 for decorating - that's just papering and painting, not plastering. Please tell me they're trying to take me for a ride because if all the quotes are in that league I'll have to learn to wallpaper and do it myself.
It does have 3 receps and 5 bedrooms but they are not enormous rooms. And I'd be providing any patterned paper and top colour paint on top of that. They're only including undercoat or lining paper in that figure.

We got our whole house done for two grand and felt like we'd paid a lot so am at your quote. That said it was a team of guys and they did a good job. Your quoters are taking the piss. I wouldn't hire them on principle.

I did my whole house, painted living rooms and large extension, hall stairs and landing, 2 bathrooms and three bedrooms - 2 coats of paint for £46 using dulux paint - plain magnolia - but fresh and nice.

I'll come and do yours, and wallpaper where you want for less than half what you've been quoted!
Wallpapering is easy BTW!! :)

Gosh I'm surprised that so many people say £120 is the going rate for a day's labour. IME it's more likely to be £250. When you add on the VAT of course it's even more.
You'd be better going directly to a decorator, rather than through your builder, I think. Their rates are likely to be lower.

Kindle if they are charging additionally for prep work, they can go and take a hike. Get your mates up and give them the job.

I definitely think your mates are the answer... Much more pleasant to have around your house, for a start. :)

£250/day would mean you'd be paying your decorator 4-5 times what you'd pay a cleaner, and almost twice what you'd pay for private music tuition, here in W. Yorks. You'd be paying your decorator more than your builder, accountant and perhaps even your solicitor!

I'd personally aim to pay about £10/hr but I'd be more likely to pay per wall or per room - there are adverts on Gumtree placed by local decorators who charge £80-100/room.

Rates won't necessarily correlate with skill. Really you need some local personal recommendations. I know you're new to the area, but have you made any friends/acquaintances yet? Other mums of the school run..? Playgroup..? Local shops..? Even your next door neighbours... I know my neighbour is the first person I'd ask if I wanted a decorator who wasn't my friend. :)

It's too high, best thing to do is to get at least four quotes, then pop them all into a spreadsheet so you can easily see what they have included for or left out..

You could post on MoneySavingExpert's forum. They have a section called 'is my quote fair' or something similar. You get lots of good advice there (not that you don't here ).

You could always employ a local quantity surveyor to draw up a proper spec and tell you what you should be paying. It would cost you a few hundred (or more depending what you have done) but it takes the guess work out of things.
I did this for a lot of the renovations we carried out on our home and found it extremely useful. I definitely saved a bundle of cash. I told the builders what I was doing before they gave me their quotes. They didn't mind at all.

When I got the quotes the quantity surveyors calculations were really useful.

We were quoted 3 grand to decorate 2 bedrooms - just paint them. We have a period house with very high ceilings. Dh bought some scaffolding and we painted them ourselves.

Usually apprentices/juniors do the prep. If there is a lot of tricky period detail it costs more eg cornices and doors needing a lot doing. I would expect a large 16x 17 high ceilinged room to be about 750-1000 smaller lower ceilinged no fiddly bits (technical term) 12x12 ish about 400.

Sounds a lot to me - we've just had halls & 2 staircases, dining room & living room ceiling done. Job was complicated by requiring a lot of prep & ornate plasterwork, lots of stainblock, lining & painting very high ceilings and an awful lot of spindles & doors. Took two guys 10days working round furniture £1200 & loads of coffee & biscuits.

Yeah, that sounds more like it, wonky. :)

we paid £100 per day labour to our decorator (extra if he supplies paint/paper etc) and he usually takes between 3 - 5 days to paint and
paper a room depending on size - and he does a very good job.
we also have a 60's house with very large rooms

We just had our hall, stairs and landing done, in London. They stripped any fiddly woodwork right back to the wood, sanded, stripped off patches of woodchip, relined with lining paper, filled missing bits of coving, and painted all walls, woodwork, and the floor.

£800, for two people, over eight days. Your builder is a chancer and an arsehole.

[Shock] . £800 for two men over 8 days = £50 a day each. That's only just minimum wage.

I pay about £120 - £150 as a day rate. I don't pay cash in hand. (Except for a gardening bloe. Who does a few hours here and there)

Typo... 'Bloke' not bloe

Could it be that they don't want the job so have deliberately quoted over the top - a bit like those insurance companies who quote £25000 for teenage boys (ie they don't want to insure them)?

DontSHOUT - I know, ridiculously cheap. And it wasn't even cash-in-hand. They're a retired couple, who do decorating to supplement their pensions. Thus, not a very good comparison. But, say, they both got paid £100 a day, the job would still have been £1600, which is still a damn sight better value than the OP's quote!

I have paid £100 day rate (labour only) for a 5 day job - 2 rooms - ceiling, walls, skirting, window ledge & door but that was in Feb '12 when my painter wasn't that busy and accepted a lower rate. In Jul '12, his rate was £250 per day (for 2 men) for a 10 day job. He was busy and he did an excellent job the first time round so I was prepared to pay him his 'normal' rate minus a modest discount for being a repeat customer! SE (outside London)

Kindle I just had entire place done (3 bed but big rooms) and it was about £4k I think poss even less. There was tons of prepping work sanding back all the original window frames bannisters etc. only one bedroom wall papered. They worked their butts off. Came back to do any snagging. Generally bent over backwards. I'm
In SW London.
Sorry for typos am on the phone.

I don't know...when we moved to our current place (also five beds) we had to strip walls of lining paper, replaster and repaint four bedrooms, repaint the front of the house...take paper down in bathroom and repaint...and that was round about £11,500. A different guy painted the loft room (much easier job) - for £300...hall ways £500 (good price) and just under a grand for the two sitting rooms.

I thought ours was expensive at the time. But we're in Greater London...and the job wasn't easy...taking all that paper down including stuff on the ceiling. You are wallpapering...it's difficult to say really. You might get him down to £12K.

I wouldn't be surprised to hear about the 'opportunism' you speak of. But it can be a huge shock to see how much more it is to decorate a larger place. We had budgeted £5K based on our 3 bedroom house...! And had to have a stiff drink after the decorator came round.

A rough guide is £200-500 per room (for everything).

That sounds a huge amount of money. But I know somebody who got a huge quote for a hall and stairs because they were very high ceilings. Somebody said around £500 per room is reasonable. Less for a small room, more for a larger room. And also £10 per hour sounds about right if an hourly charge is applied. It's not unheard of for a very big job for a quote to be half as much as another one. Hope you get sorted out.

I am renovating a big old Victorian terrace: 3 receptions, 4 bedrooms. Plastering etc has been done. I only want white semi-satin throughout, with white gloss woodwork, and the quote was for just under £4000.

Kindlemum - he thinks your thick and is trying to fleece you - problem is he is not very bright and didn't even think about the fact you were an accountant as he probably doesn't understand accountants deal with VAT...

Go and find a large barge pole and keep him that far away from you at all times

then find another decorator and explain when you want the quote you are an accountant and the last builder tried to fleece you thinking you wouldn't understand the accounting part - which will then hopefully sink in that you know about figures and VAT