The Pains of Painters
The reasons may vary, depending upon who's handling the brushes and rollers, but finding a painting contractor this summer could prove to be a bit of a challenge for area homeowners.
A shallow labor pool, a pent-up desire to launch home improvement projects and even a shortage of supplies have led to a backlog of painting projects in some places.
Jim Eichenlaub, executive director of the Builders Association of Metropolitan Pittsburgh, said he can't speak for “Joe and Mary Homeowner wanting to have their house painted. But if I'm just looking to have my house painted, I can only imagine it's the same thing that people are going through with remodeling their homes.”
The remodeling end of things is very busy this summer, Eichenlaub said. Part of the problem there, such as the price of lumber, doesn't really apply to painting projects.
But the labor problem certainly applies, and so does an issue with supplies for some in the painting business.Finding good help isn't just a product of the pandemic; it's been an issue for several years, Eichenlaub said.“It's been a constant challenge: getting people who want to work in the construction trades,” he said. “But the pandemic certainly has exacerbated that, because some people are slow going back to work.”Clair Boring, a Butler-based painting contractor who has been in business for 52 years, has experienced the labor issue firsthand and he said it's particularly problematic this summer.In fact, it's so busy that Boring, who got his start in the business when he painted his family home at age 15, is personally working more now, at age 68, than he ever did “because there's nobody out there” to hire.“It's continuing to get harder and harder,” he said. “What's going on now makes it a lot tougher to find anybody.”
What's going on now, Boring said, is a combination of factors, including government assistance in the form of supplemental payments on top of unemployment benefits, a shift in priorities when it comes to work ethic and a lack of interest among some young people to acquire do-it-yourself skills.“Some of it is society in general,” he said. “Young people are not looking to do the hard work — the dirty work — and kids aren't being raised to understand the basic skills of being handy.“The do-it-yourselfers: I don't know where they went, but nobody is coming up with those kinds of skills, and that's making it more difficult.”
Previous generations, Boring said, passed those sorts of skills down from father to son in many families.“I was always with my dad outside doing something, learning something,” he said. “Back then, everyone had skills, everyone was handy. You could pick up a brush, pick up a hammer. It was just the way they were raised.“Today, they pick up a cell phone, pick up a tablet. That's their skills today.”Boring also said that the government is “paying people to stay at home right now, and that's made it even worse. You can make better money staying at home than coming out to work.”In past years, Boring had 15 to 20 people working for him at this time of year, but this year it's more like a half-dozen or so.Twenty-five years ago, he said, all it would take was a single help-wanted advertisement to find dozens of potential employees.“Now I put five ads in and I'm lucky to get three or four people to respond,” he said.As a result, he said, he's not advertising his services. Still, his phone continues to ring with people wanting to have painting projects done.“We're so busy: We have all the work we could ever want,” he said. “We're doing as much as we can, but we don't know if we'll be able to get done everything we have on the books right now.”
Sean Bell, a union painter who paints houses on the side as well, said the pandemic might have prompted people who were stuck at home to decide that their house could use a new coat of paint or a more extensive makeover. That, combined with the labor crunch, has meant plenty of business for people like him.“I'm just getting flooded with people who want to fix up their homes,” said Bell, a Cranberry Township resident. “I think all the trades are busy right now, and it's totally hard to find any kinds of contractors.”In addition to the labor issue, supplies can be an issue as well. During the pandemic, paint manufacturers were slowed to some extent, Bell said, so it can be a challenge to find paint as well as other supplies such as brushes and roller covers.
Gary Stirling, another longtime Butler area painting contractor, hasn't run into any such issues with supplies or labor.“When you're in business a long time, companies might do more for us than for someone on a lower scale,” he said. “We haven't had any problem with supplies.”Stirling said he's been getting an “awful overflow of calls this year” from people looking to have their homes painted. He suspects that some contractors might have gone out of business during the pandemic and that has meant more work for those companies who continue to thrive.Both Stirling and Boring said it's difficult to provide a cost estimate for painting a house because each job is different.“It really depends on what you're doing, how much prep you have and things like that,” said Boring, who said a rough ballpark figure might be $1.50 per square foot for a house with aluminum or vinyl siding and roughly 75 cents per square foot for interior work.
Stirling said he doesn't provide estimates over the phone because callers might be “amateurs” or people just getting started in the business looking to undercut his prices.“We go to every job and talk to people in person and give them a price on the whole job,” he said.Homeowners who haven't had any luck finding someone to take on their home improvement/painting project shouldn't give up, Bell said.His suggestion: be persistent.“I have my regular customers I've painted for years, but when people call and ask if I can do a job, I tell them to be a nagger: just keep calling me,” he said. “Seriously, it works. Just call me and eventually I'll get to you.”
