AAPaint

Very Nice Work. Hope to have some to show off sometime in the near future, but we're just getting rolling again, so it's going to take a little time to generate business again.

In picture #2 you're facing the thing. Put your ladder on the front, climb up, and lay your 2x12's across left to right. Two ten foot boards together will give you enough room to stand comfortably, or kneel as need be. While sitting on them, you should be able to easily reach a row of three or four of those 1x2's to stain them. Even if you were spraying, you'd still have to get up top to make sure you got it all with that thing. The ones on the bottom are running to and from the house, those can be stained from the bottom on 3 sides. Then you get the top of them from the top, the others you'll have to do 3 sides of them from the top. Run your 2x12's left to right. All you need is a walk board to get it done. You can slide them forward towards the house, stain that area, and slide them back as you go. You should have no problem standing on the 1x2's at times, as long as you're standing over the structural stringers while moving your boards around. It's harder to explain in text than it is to do it. With a sprayer I could be up there and done within 10 to 15 minutes. You can use a pump up garden sprayer depending on the type of stain you're applying too and it will go pretty quick.

You can climb up there and lay two 2x12's side by side with each other across the top to walk (or kneel) on while you do the staining. As long as you span the gap between the stringers, the weight will be supported by your 2x12's and the stringers, not the 1x2's. Done this before painting different things. Others may chime in with different ideas.

Base your price on your overhead, materials, your own hourly wage, and a profit margin for the business. Your hourly wage and the profit margin for the business are separate, by the way. Would her price pay for fuel (driving there, and running equipment), chemicals, setup and cleanup time, or the actual work involved? The ONLY reason you need square footage numbers is so you can do the math on your production rates (i.e. 500 sq. ft. per hour, or whatever your rate actually is) and come up with a total price. Whatever you do, don't bid by some arbitrary per sq. ft. pricing.

Thanks Beth. I hope we can get things off the ground smoothly. On my current budget, I'll need a lot of luck, I'm sure. Hey James, I'm glad you like the name. I beat myself up for ages trying to get the name right. I'm still kicking myself to get a good slogan in order!

You need a good paint stripper to take that up. Preferably a "green" paint stripper. If it's possible apply a stripper, covering with plastic, and let it sit overnight. Then hit it with hot water and a turbo nozzle and you'll be golden. The longer you can let the paint stripper dwell the better. I've dealt with this stuff on driveways before, and I wish I could remember the stuff I used years ago. It was environmentally friendly, and would pull up just about anything, including epoxies and lacquers. If I stumble across it again, I'll let you know, but don't try to tackle this without some chemicals to help. You'll work yourself to death.

I'm very interested in this thread, and I'm totally against what 90% of the posters are doing. I agree with Nick. You should know your costs and charge accordingly. If you're not closing jobs based on price, there is something wrong in the business model. I'm not talk trash as a newbie on this forum (see my other post) I used to gross $20K/mo with my last business, and I have NEVER bid a job on some arbitrary sq. ft. numbers. The software I use for estimating allows me to input my real world production rates for everything we do, and then output a figure based on those. It is $X.XX per sq ft. but it's based on production figures, company overhead, materials, and profit. Not some arbitrary price per square foot. For instance. You charge $1 per sq. ft. Is that for everything? Doesn't it take longer to strip or stain handrails? Of course it does. What if the work is off the ground and requires climbing a ladder to do a lot of it? Is $1 per sq. ft. going to cover all of that ladder work too? I don't know why, but it seems contractors are the only business people I've ever met who try to mold themselves to some arbitrary figure. No other business on earth does this. If it costs them more to produce a product, you're going to pay for it when you purchase it. You should know exactly what to charge per man, per hour in the field, and to top it off, if you want to be successful, you should know exactly how many hours you need to sell at that rate per year, to make exactly the income you want to make. I'm flat broke going back into business, but I'll be damned if I'm charging some arbitrary figure for nothing. I know exactly what my costs are, exactly what I want to make, and exactly how much I have to sell to make it. I know exactly what my production rates are. I know exactly what my overhead is, and I know exactly how much profit I want per job. These are what determines my price. Nothing else. Learning this valuable lesson from other contractors with my last business is how we became successful.....it was absolutely VITAL to how we operated, and always will be.