What moves the price of an exterior paint job up or down?

The six things that move it

These are what we’re adding up while we walk the house.

Size and height

A second story means ladders and staging, and work that goes slower because of where the painter is standing. Dormers, gables and a walkout on a hill all do the same thing.

What the siding is made of

Wood, hardboard, vinyl, stucco and brick each take different prep and different amounts of paint. Wood with a lot of grain and a lot of joints is the slow one.

How much prep

The biggest single lever, and the one you can see yourself. Paint that is peeling or chalking has to come off before anything goes on. Scraping, sanding, caulking and priming bare wood is most of the labor on an old house and almost none of it on a house painted five years ago.

Wood rot

Soft trim, a sill that gives under a thumb, trim that has been wet for years. We repair it rather than paint over it. Some of it does not show up until the scraping starts.

How many colors

Body, trim, front door and any other color you pick out. Every extra color is another cut line and another setup. Changing the trim from the body color to its own color costs more than keeping it.

What we can get a ladder to

Landscaping, decks, steep ground, a sunroom roof, a neighbor's fence two feet away. Access does not sound like money until it is.