About this site

Almost every homeowner has the same story: three contractors, three wildly different quotes, and no way to tell which one is fair. This site exists to fix that one problem.

Why it exists

Painting quotes vary more than almost any other home service, and the information available online is close to useless — broad averages with no scope attached, published by companies that have never held a brush. A homeowner comparing quotes has no reference point at all.

So we put a real contractor's pricing model out in the open. You can see what a project should cost before you talk to anybody, and you don't have to trade your phone number for the privilege.

Who's behind it

Louie Burmeister is a residential painting contractor based in Madison, Wisconsin. The cost model here reflects how his company actually quotes interior work, calibrated against invoices from jobs it has completed.

That's a deliberate tradeoff. A contractor's real pricing data is far more accurate than scraped averages, but it starts out specific to one market. Rather than pretend otherwise, the calculator tells you when it's showing you a national range instead of a local one, and the methodology page spells out exactly where the numbers come from.

How this site makes money

It doesn't yet, and we would rather say that plainly than pretend to a business model we don't have. If you're near Madison, Wisconsin, you can ask for a real estimate from the contractor behind the data. Everywhere else, the calculator and the quote check are simply free.

What we don't do is sell your contact details to a network of contractors, which is how most free estimate tools actually work.