Finding a Painter?

They must have liability insurance. Your homeowner's policy probally only pays $500 medical and it does NOT cover employees. I would verify with the insurance company myself.

I would ask for recent references. WHICH employees actually do the painting on your house? How experienced are they? You want to make sure they are not sloppy, leaving paint drippings on the baseboard or floor for instance.
Also, do they work until done or will they be leaving to give estimates and work on other jobs? You need them to come in and finish before starting another job unless the paint is drying.

Check the BBB website for complaints. I would ignore those with more than one complaint. It means they did not resolved problems until forced to.

we had our outside of our house painted 2 years ago, and what we did was get 3 estimates first, since the estimates were free, then we picked who we liked the best. And definately, they need liability insurance.

If you have a big project that is going to cost a few thousand Angies list is worth it. We were waterproofing our basement so we got a membership, signed up for a month or two. It was very uch worth it because we found out some things about companies that made us not go with them. Of course ever company is going to have their pro and cons but with the help of Angies list we picked the one that worked best for us.

BBB is an ok place to start BUT one of their top rated waterproofing compaines actaully got a bad rating on Angies list. This is a national company but they are pushing, horrible sales tatics, not fully up front about stuff and we decided then to not go with them because of Angies list.

I would look up painters in your area, yellow pages or similar, and have a few give you qoutes. Ask if they are insured for their workers and if they are insured if damage is done to your house. Ask for referances, many compaines either will give you a list of people you can call or have written letters (granted most will be positive). How long they have been painting. What the time frame is (when can you come to paint, how long will it take).

I highly... HIGHLY... recommend Angie's List. Unless you can get a good referal from a friend, this is the best way to go. We have an old house and have had a membership for three or four years. We have hired 5 contractors based on the service, and they have all been excellent. One of them is, in my opinion, the best contractor on the planet.

I think the fee is $30 for a year, or maybe less for a few months. You're probably going to spend around $1000 (give or take, depending on your market) on this project. $30 is a fraction to spend to get detailed opinions and recommendations to increase the probability of getting a great job done.

You'll still need to call three or four of them and ask the questions below. But AL allows you to search for contractors with "A" ratings only and read what others have said.

We think its worth it! Good luck with your project.

Angies list is worth EVERY penny! Every company I have ever hired from the list has done outstanding work. Three of the companies I called were never even hired; they just told me for free over the phone how I can easily fix it myself or told me that they would come out if I wanted them to, but that I really didn't need them. There was one company I used for flooring BEFORE I got an Angies list membership. They did a horrible job. When I looked them up on Angies list, they had a D rating.

You save SO much more in money and in time by using the companies on Angies than you will spend on the membership fee!