Do Americans actually paint their house walls themselves? I’ve watched this many times in movies and series, and I wonder if it’s a real habit, because it’s not common in my country. So, is it real or just Hollywood stuff?

37 comments

  4. Sometimes yes. It’s not very uncommon to repaint your own walls, but usually you get a professional. It’s a popular DIY project because you can save a lot of money and it’s hard to ruin the function of anything when all you’re doing is paint.

    In my professional opinion as a carpenter, most people do a terrible job of it, but that’s OK.

  5. Where is it common not to paint your walls yourself? Sure some people employ a decorator but I just assumed it was normal to do either everywhere

  7. We can. Head to the hardware store, buy supplies and just start painting. Is it something we do all the time as just regular home owners? I don’t think so. I’ll imagine most keep their walls as they came, paint them sometime after they first move in or get a new member to the family and feel they can have something special, or after some years and there’s a desire to remodel. On that, if someone is going to remodel their entire house or just don’t want to risk messing it up for a single room then another person will be hired to do the work.

  11. We got estimates for painting the inside of our house, came out to almost $1500 a room. Fuck off with that shit. The paint cost me a total of $750 and it took three days including all prep work, plaster patching, taping, and clean up. I basically paid myself $3500 a day to smoke dope, drink beer, listen to music, and paint. And I did a better job then they would have done. It’s a no-brainer.

    But you really want to talk about saving money – we have a 43 foot boat we live on in the winter (Florida). Got an estimate for bottom paint, the hull, and decks (but not superstructure). They wanted $40,000. As in $40 fucking GRAND. So we did it. Total cost in paint, epoxy, fiberglass, and miscellaneous supplies was $5000. It took two of us a total of 7 working days. Saved ourselves $5000 a day.

    I’m retired so I’m not losing any pay doing it myself, so that helps.

  12. Some people do. A friend of mine and his wife did their living room for instance. I paid to get my homes interior painted though, too much work.

  14. Yeah all the time. The only time we paid to have rooms in our house painted was when we had water damage and insurance covered it. Every other room we painted ourselves. Otherwise it’s too expensive to hire someone.

  15. Completely normal. I have many times in the past. I’m too cheap to pay someone else.

  16. Yeah, it’s normal. My dad is a huge fan of “touching up” (completely repainting) the white ceiling paint in my parents’ house every couple years.

  17. Yes, it’s a pretty easy thing to do yourself to save money on hiring people to do it. Usually you’re not allowed to paint the walls in a rental unit though.

  19. Yeah it’s pretty common for the poor through upper middle class. It’s something that isn’t super technical to do and usually professional painters are kept busy with bigger jobs like offices or retail stores

  20. Yeah. I have only ever paid professional painters when getting a house ready for sale. When we wanted a different color inside, or needed to paint the outside to make the house look nice, we have always done it ourselves. When we were frantically trying to pack, clean, etc and get the house ready for sale, it made sense in a “time is money” kind of way to have pros do the whole house at once, and have us concentrate on everything else.

  22. I’d say it depends. There are more handy people and less handy people in USA. I would definitely say it’s not uncommon.

  23. Yeah, hiring someone to do it is expensive and unreliable, you’ve got to be pretty wealthy to not paint your own walls.

  24. Mostly by myself. I did rent a “pro” grade paint sprayer when redoing my entire house long ago. I did hire someone to finish the exterior… namely because my ladder wasn’t enough to handle 30M, and I wasn’t putting up my own scaffolding.

    A room? Aww heck, why would I hire someone to do that?

  25. Yep. It’s the “do it yourself” option that literally everyone can do, so we do it.

  26. I painted my whole house a couple months ago and it was awful. That being said, shelling out 2-4k to paint is ridiculous

  27. Yep. It’s not that difficult (for a simple room with a low ceiling) and you don’t have to pay someone to do

  29. I’m 23 and I’ve helped to paint like 5 houses lol. My childhood home, my bfs and Mines last and current houses, and 2 of my friends houses

    I’m done painting houses for the rest of my life. I got like 2 more house paints in me

  30. Outsides are typically a professional.

    You can hire someone for internal walls but generally it’s way cheaper to do on your own.

    And the bonus is you can have your significant other do the trim work and end up wanting to murder you!

  31. Not only do I paint my own walls, I do my own renovations. Changing light fixtures, renovating the kitchen, laying flooring, plumbing, everything. I’ll be changing out the tub in my bathroom in the next couple months. And no, I’m not any sort of contractor. I watch a lot of YouTube, and do research on how to do it. It’s cheaper

  32. Yes, that is much more common than hiring someone. I suspect painters are much cheaper in Brazil than they are here. You’re looking at a difference between hundreds for supplies or thousands of dollars for professionals.

  33. Older Americans. You won’t see young people doing it. Because Young people don’t have the time or money to own a home. And landlords paint over bugs for you.

    But I have helped an older woman I liked paint her walls a slightly different shade of white. I still don’t know why she wanted to do that but it made her happy. And she’s awesome. Definitely a shirt-off-her-back, weed from her special stashe kind of hippy.

  36. When they are built, those that build them will paint them. If you are doing a maintenance coat, changing room color, or painting before/after a sale many people do it themselves because it is much cheaper and easy enough to do for a non-professional. But it is not unheard of to hire someone specifically to paint as well, particularly for those who are old.

  37. I know some people hire painters, but it never occurred to me that people in other countries would find it odd to paint your own house.

    This is why I love this sub. The questions of others can teach you a lot about other cultures and parts of the world. Even though it was about something insignificant like painting interior walls, I learned something new today. Thanks for sharing, OP.

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