skim coating contractor estimate

19 years ago

My wife and I are considering having our new apartment walls skim coated before being painted, but we have been shocked by the price quote we got from our otherwise fairly reasonable (and very reliable) contractor. He quoted us at roughly $12 a sq. foot, which comes to quite a bit of money for a 2 bedroom apartment. Now i realize that this is New York City and nothing comes cheap, but does this price seem way out of line??? (of course the painting quote itself is about $5 a square foot...)

tks for any thoughts or suggestions...

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Comments (5)

randymeyer
19 years ago
More info needed.

What do you mean by sf? Floor footage or actual sf of wall space. Does the $5 /sf painting price include trim, windows, doors, etc?

Give us the total footages of wall space and ceiling space along with the price and we should be able to help.
danieleise
Original Author
19 years ago
sorry, i mean actual sf of wall space, not floor footage (about 1400 sf wall space in our apartment...)

the $5/sf does include virtually everything...but that figure refers to total square floor footage in the apartment...
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Jon1270
19 years ago
So, you've got a price of $24,000 to skim-coat and paint an apartment that must well under 1000 sf (unless you have no partitions) of floor space? Really? I know next to nothing about NYC prices, but it's hard to imagine that's right.
spanky67
19 years ago
Don't forget, skim coating tends to be a very regional thing. It's almost the norm in S.E. Massachusetts and Rhode Island, but almost unheard of in Connecticut. I've been told that part of it comes from the fact that Portugese people tend to be experts in this finish and some of the largest Portugese populations are in SE Mass. You may be getting these kind of numbers because there is a very limited number of people that know how to even do that finish. Or you're just getting the NY City discount!
brunosonio
19 years ago
We had our hallway, entryway, and bedrooms skim coated, and new drywall installed in the living/great/kitchen area. I'm not sure how much the actual skim coating came to, but from the bids I got, it averaged out slightly less than installing new drywall. It's a very labor intensive process, and to do it correctly and beautifully takes quite a bit of practice, especially if you go to a level 4 or 5 smooth finish for painting (no orange peel finish...this is museum wall quality).

I had bids ranging from 6k to 12K. The contractor I used charged about 8K for the total job, and threw in 2 extra bedrooms for only 250 each, because he and his guys were going to be on the job for a long time, and I made the job easy by removing all trim and windows, so all he had to do was come in and skim the bedroom walls.

The skim coating involved cleaning, applying the coating, letting it dry for a week, then sanding. It got rid of some horrible 1970's heavy almost stucco-like knock down finish...made it super smooth. I was very skeptical about it, but am a believer now. And I saved throwing a bunch of still-usable drywall into the trash...a nice way of renovating green.