Costs to paint

Hi all, I am the owner of a 1979 42’ GB Europa, and will soon be required to paint or otherwise renew the vertical surfaces, I.e. Hull, house and fly bridge.
I talking with a paint supervisor at a reputable West Coast Boatyard, I was told I could expect to pay upwards of $50,000.

I have no idea painting could cost that much. Does an6one out there have experience with painting the house and fly bridge? How about painting the hull?

Would appreciate anyone’s thoughts on such a venture.

Thanks,

IWAB

If you can get the boat to Los Angeles hit me up with a direct message. There is a marina there that still lets owners and contractors work on boats, including painting. A bunch of people go there as transients and get work done or do work. There are two painters that are probably 50% time there and 50% time somewhere else that are really good. Small sailboats usually go about $4-6k, house and hull. 42' aft cabin trawlers, e.g. Californian or grand banks, house, hull, and fly bridge, $12-$18k. Sand, some minor repairs, prime, awlgrip. All depends on condition. But, the folks have been painting there for 10-40 years, are well known, and have good reps.

I've done some painting with awlgrip and perfection. Like Awlgrip better in all respects.

I painted our boat the last 2 years. We painted the flybridge, cabin and decks one year. Then last year I painted the hull. I had several thousand in paint and supplies. I actually painted everything but the hull myself. I did all the prep work on the hull and hired a painter to come in and spray the hull. It took 12 hours and cost me $80 per hour so less than $1000 to get the hull sprayed. It looks beautiful now. The painter said he would have charged $25,000 plus to do the entire hull job. But by doing all the prep and masking it cost me under $3,000 for the hull. But I have a yard that will allow me to do any work I want to except sanding bottom paint.

I just got a quote on painting my 32 ft hull only from bottom of cap rail to top of the boot stripe. Prep hull , one coat primer, two coats paint, all new lettering and buffed out. The paint was awl craft . The quote was right at 20k . I had no idea it would be that much. That’s more than half the value of the boat. I’ll have to come up with another plan .

Good paint is really expensive, but most of the cost is in the prep. If you have the time, sand and prep it yourself, and save big bucks. $50,000 is a “big yard” quote, but the order of magnitude is right. Haven’t seen the condition, but it probably couldn’t be less than $25,000 to have somebody do it start to finish.

Iwab, As Dave mentioned, the more prep work you do yourself will bring down the price tag. In my case, I had a yard paint the hull, deck house and flybridge in 2014 with Alexseal. I removed the bow rail, cleats, and all the other deck and hull hardware. The cost was $30k total. Make sure to demand a fixed price and hold them to it.

As part of a full restoration/refit, took my 1970 Willard 36 from San Francisco to Ensenada MX (70-nms south of San Diego). There is one well-known yard there: Baja Naval. Full paint from waterline to top of bridge, including encapsulating caprails was supposed to be $25k, which makes sense given their posted rates are under $30/hr. It then went to $50k, ostensibly due to fiberglass repairs (they said all gelcoat needed to be removed), which was damn close to the quote I received in the SF Bay area yard before departing, so hard not to assume Baja Naval is trying to get Southern California rates. I ended up finding a small group in Ensenada - Niza Marine - who are very good with fiberglass, painting, and carpentry, honest, and a pleasure to work with. Rates are about 30% lower than the Baja Naval. Frankly, my boat is 50-years old and has a ton of fiberglass repair to be done from old instruments, etc. I am having a lot of other work being done so it's a little hard to say, but would say a basic paint job on my work with basic prep work would be in the $20k-$22k range from waterline up. I do not remember if that includes non-skid, which was around $1700 more to do the 2-tone with non-skid.

With Alexseal or Quantum, they are designed to be able to roll with tipping as optional. So you could paint the whole boat yourself. The reason we sprayed my boat is I wasn’t sure if my shoulders would be able to do that much rolling up high and once you start you need to keep going til you are done. I spent a lot of time over several months prepping the hull. But keep in mind that my hull had a lot of fiberglass repairs to do as the PO managed to hit everywhere on the boat at some time or another. I probably did 100+ repairs on the hull. Add to that, President put the gel coat on way too thick in places. .125” thick in places so I ground it to bare glass and then faired it out. If your boat is in decent shape the prep isn’t too difficult but it is time consuming.

And then you could DIY, "Roll & Tip" with a 2 part polyurethane.
I had a 30' sailboat, red gelcoat, that soon looked so chalky it had to be painted. At ~8 yrs I did it myself with Pettit Easypoxy. the paint went on easily and looked good, but went dull in a year or so. I then sanded most of that off and repainted with Interlux 2 part, roll & tip. that was done in 1988. I saw the boat in 2007 and that paintjob still looked good, not as-new, but for a 19 yr old paint job, red to boot, it looked pretty good.
Total cost was minimal. The sanding of the EasyP took the most time.

Two more data points:

1. Paint 36-foot hull only. Owner of a sistership to my 36-foot double-ender had the hull-only painted by a full service San Francisco bay area yard about 15-years ago. He paid around $12k as I recall.

2. DIY. A French couple on a ~50-foot Amel sailboat with pilothouse spent about 6-months of weekends and evenings rolling/tipping their boat. I believe they used Brightsides, a 1-part enamel paint. That was also around 15-years ago. By chance, I bumped into them last year on my way south along the California coast. Their boat still looked great. They saved a ton of money, but spent a ton of time too.

Numbers I gave previously of around $22k are for a full-service paint job, including tape/sandpaper/supplies; and removal/re-installation of all hardware. My caprails were wasted and I want them totally encapsulated in fiberglass, so that is another $2k or so.

I can't tell you what the paint and prep portion of my refit cost in 2015, but it was worth every penny!

First, you need to decide how close you want your boat to look good. Mine looked good at 5' and the prep (work before and between coats) was 95% of the labor. At 10' the labor probably halfs.

Second, you need to decide how long you want it to look good. My boat is Awlgriped, done by the book. I'm guessing that paint cost was around 10% of the total paint and prep cost. The percentage would be higher if you do a lot of the labor. My point is not to promote a specific paint, but if you're going to own the boat long enough, doubling the cost of the paint is cheap as opposed to painting it again or trying to sell a boat with tired paint. My charter boat still looks good. It gets waxed once a year. The superstructure paint is 15 years old. The hull paint is 11 I think.

Ted

1976 boat with worn out gelcoat and a fair number of spider cracks.

I was quoted $40k by a quality yard for the 5' prep & paintjob. They do great work. Didn't do it.

Hired a local freelancer who prepped, rolled & tipped for $8k. Probably an 11.5' job by Ted's metric. Actually looks great.

All Awlgrip prep and paint material.

It's a nominal 43' aft cabin with a 14.5' beam. The paint job was shearline up.

I posted this in 2008.

Paint job still looks great.


Greetings List

This past June I re-painted the topsides (hull-waterline to gunnels), using a
2-part Sterling/Detco system.

My boat is a 37' cold moulded pilothouse, outer hull finished with a layer of
fiberglass cloth and epoxy.

The original coating was Awlgrip. It was exactly 10 years old and was in need
of refinishing in a few areas - dull spots, small nicks etc.

I had been looking around to have the paint job done by different yards.
Quotes ranged from $12k - $22k for spray jobs. I did find one guy who has
some sort of AGREEMENT with a yard that lets him spray boats in a non approved
scenario, i.e. non-negative pressure paint booth. His quote was around $4k if
I did all the prep.

I have done alot of painting in the commercial construction trade - alot of
spraying with 1 part paints, and alot of rolling with 1 and 2 part paints.
The spraying of these 2-part polyurethanes is tricky, as the atomized
particulates and solvents are extremely toxic, hence the requirement for
constant neg. pressure in the booth as well as the applicator's hood, so you
end up paying extra for the overhead of an approved paint shop.

I was a bit skeptical of some of the claims concerning Roll and Tip
applications. You read/hear testimonies of how a well done roll and tip job
has a deeper luster than a sprayed job. During last years cruise we docked
next to a 32' Sundowner tug that had recently been roll and tipped in the
water no less - and it really looked great. So the reality is that many of
these products are very user friendly, so long as you follow all the
directions to the letter - this includes temp and humidity requirements.
Also, if the wind is blowing you will have dust bumps sticking to your new
paint, so it might make sense to drape the boat with tarps in that case.

I had never used the 'roll and tip' method until this time. I am now a fan.
We had a nice window of good weather and low wind and I painted the boat right
in the open yard. I think it came out great. Had so many walk by's and
compliments, that I could have sold a years worth of product right there in
the yard if I were a distributor.

The prep went much faster than I anticipated it would. Also, I thought I would
need to use the 'high build' primer, but found I was able to sand/fair the old
coating fair quite easily, then used the regular primer - 2 coats.

I used Sterling/Detco 2-part. Rolled and tipped with one helper(the admiral).
It took about 2 hours to do a coat once around.

The topcoat goes on like a dream, I used 3 coats as I had enough paint in the
'kit' to easily make 3 passes. After the first coat the finish was
spectacular, after the 3rd it is unbelievable.

Having used lots of different coatings over the years I can say 2 things about
this product:
1. It is the most expensive paint system I have bought.
2. It is the smoothest, nicest finished product I have applied.

So it is worth it & if I get another 10 years out of this coating, I will be
more than satisfied.

by the way, total price to do approx. 400 square feet of surface including
rollers, brushes and tape was around $600.00. - With the savings I now can
afford to fill up the fuel tanks.




here is a great primer on roll and tipping with the product:

http://www.boatbuildercentral.com/he...g_roll_tip.htm

here is a link to the mfg:

http://www.detcomarine.com/sltopcoat.htm


no affiliation with Sterling - just a very pleased customer


The paint job is now 3 years old.
The gloss is as pretty today as it was on day one, with the exception of one spot where the boat rubs against a large fender in the slip.
And even that spot is hardly noticable if you know where to look.
Of course I managed to nick the paint within 2 weeks of painting while loading the dinghy motor.
At least the touch up was easy - mix tiny amounts of paint and dab it on.

Good luck



Brian Shanafelt
Isobel K.
Seattle, WA
37' Custom Pilothouse

First paint over gelcoat requires filling the entire surface to make good tiny pinholes. Second painting should not. So very labour intensive. Quote does not sound so unreasonable. Wait until you see the amount of masking required for a spray job. Roll/tip or brush would be way cheaper.
Some people do the house areas in high quality single pack paint rather than 2 pack like the hull topsides, making it more readily repainted DIY.
Painting is just plain expensive.

We sprayed our boat. The masking took a day. One huge tarp over the flybridge and down to the rubrail as I had previously painted the bridge, cabin and decks. Used a lot of the pretaped plastic to mask individual areas. Sprayed it. Took 2 hours to unmask the whole thing. Pretty easy once the prep was done.

Whoa! 50 grand? No thank you. I rolled and tipped my boat last year. Wasn’t sure I could do it but it turned out to be easy just time consuming. I impressed everyone at the marina! She looks great and I guess I saved a ton of money and didn’t even know it! I just wanted to give it a try!!

Comodave said:

...I wasn’t sure if my shoulders would be able to do that much...

Click to expand...

You got that right. I ran a Porter-Cable buffer for waxing the freeboard... ONCE. Afterward, it felt like I'd been hung by my thumbs, so much shoulder ache...

This is exactly what I am going through with my boat right now. I was quoted $20K to paint my hull. Well I've decided to do it myself. Several month (weekends and holidays) of preparation, fixing, fearing and sending. Now ready to prime and paint. After long and intensive studies I will use Alexseal paint products. I will roll and tip. No spraying aloud at my marina. It is not hard it just takes time, allot of time.

If you value your time at zero, and are somewhat handy, and have a yard that will let you do it, DIY is certainly and option.

Once during a hurricane haul out at Jarrett Bay here in NC, when there are some 200+ boats of all types up on the hard, I walked through the yard with an experienced surveyor. He could almost immediately identify which ones had been DIY or el cheapo painted and which were done by a top tier yard. We had a guy from the yard with us for awhile, who agreed in each case and as they are always looking for these opportunities to generate revenue, he made some notes and asked the owners (among other stuff they saw that needed work). When I followed up, turns out they were right every time, save for those that owner had no idea what may have been done by POs.

I took my 36-foot boat to Mexico to be painted from waterline up. Done right - removal of all hardware (and I mean all, and there was a lot of stuff - handrails, cleats, etc.), plus fiberglass repair of multiple holes from old, obsolete gauges in addition to normal body work/repairs. Multiple coats of hi-build primer and a couple coats of sprayed Alexseal. Base paint job is $22k, the non-skid areas were another $1700 or so (every yard I talked to quoted non-skid separately, which was annoying). Another yard in Mexico quoted close to $50k for same work, but they compete with SoCal yards. I also had the caprail on hull and the flybridge encapsulated in fiberglass - around $2k.

When I lived aboard, a neighboring cruising couple painted their 48-foot sailboat. An industrious couple - they spent many, many months of weekends doing the work. I bumped into them recently - after 10+ years, the paint still looks good. They used a one-part modified epoxy paint (Brightsides or something similar - I forget).

Back when US fishermen could fish tuna in Mexican waters, all of us fishing there had our haul outs and other yard work done in Mexico. Generally as good as US yards for about 1/2 the price.

One word in defense of yard costs: It's not easy to paint and end up with a yacht like finish. If you paint your boat, you're willing to overlook minor imperfections. But the yard is expected to be perfect. They have expenses you don't have. Insurance, property tax and employee expenses beyond simple wages.

I don’t begrudge a yard their prices. They have to make a profit in order to stay in business. Boat yards are not usually highly profitable businesses. I love working on my boat so I do it. So boat yard prices rarely effect me. We did have a previous boat painted in SoCal. I am sure they violated many rules but they painted it in the water. The workers balanced on styrofoam rafts while they prepped and sprayed the hull. They did out 46’ from the waterline up completely for around $14K back in 2003. They did an incredible job.

Pack Mule said:

I just got a quote on painting my 32 ft hull only from bottom of cap rail to top of the boot stripe. Prep hull , one coat primer, two coats paint, all new lettering and buffed out. The paint was awl craft . The quote was right at 20k . I had no idea it would be that much. That’s more than half the value of the boat. I’ll have to come up with another plan .

Click to expand...

Exactly why we wrapped our hull (caprail to boot stripe).

All in costs, including bailout, prep work- $7k.

http://www.trawlerforum.com/forums/s3/results-our-fall-project-29223.html

Pau Hana said:

Exactly why we wrapped our hull (caprail to boot stripe).

All in costs, including bailout, prep work- $7k.

http://www.trawlerforum.com/forums/s3/results-our-fall-project-29223.html

Click to expand...

How is the wrap holding up? Fender chafe, dock bumps, dingy thumps etc.

Portage_Bay said:

How is the wrap holding up? Fender chafe, dock bumps, dingy thumps etc.

Click to expand...

We have fender socks, so no fender rash/chafe (and we haven’t babied the wrap- toss the fenders over and let them do their thing). One bump on the bullnose (front below the anchor) which was easily repaired.

Overall- excellent!