Drywall and Painting Quote Review ($99): A Builder Puts Your Drywall, Taping or Painting Quotes on One Grid and Tells You Which to Sign

Drywall, Taping & PaintingIndependent review

Drywall and Painting Quote Review: A Builder Reads Your Quotes Against Your Walls Before You Sign

Up to three quotes and your photos, on one grid, with a plain answer. No contractor behind it, no commission on who you hire.

Three quotes for the basement: $14,000, $19,500 and $26,000. One says “Level 4”, one says “finished”, one says nothing. One measured the floor. One left out the ceilings. One has the primer in and two do not. You cannot tell which is which from the kitchen table, and the fellow who wrote the cheap one is not going to explain. I will. For $99 the quotes go on the twelve-line grid, the areas get checked against your rooms, the blanks get priced, and you get a written answer on which one to sign and what to ask the others.

Reviews are done by a Tarion-registered Ontario builder with 300-plus houses behind him, every one of them drywalled, taped and painted by trades he hired and inspected. Turnaround three business days.

What you get

Drywall and Painting Quote Review
$99

Up to three quotes, plus your photos. HST added at checkout.

  • Every quote put on the same twelve-line grid, side by side
  • The square footage checked against your rooms: floor or wall, and by how much
  • The finish level, primer, products and coats each one actually promised, named or missing
  • What each one leaves out, in dollars: ceilings, trim, doors, Level 5, bead, delivery, dust control
  • The price per square foot checked against Ontario October 2026 rates
  • From your photos: which wall problems are taping, which are paint, and which are the house
  • A plain answer: sign this one, go back to that one with these questions, or walk
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Interior Finishing Takeoff
$249

One house or basement, from your plans. HST added at checkout.

  • Every room measured off the drawings: walls both faces, ceilings, openings, heights from the sections
  • Board schedule: thickness and type by location, Type X and MR where needed, sheets by wall length with waste
  • Finish levels by surface, corners counted, the stairwell and cathedral extras named
  • Painter’s quantities: wall and ceiling area by sheen, baseboard feet, openings, doors, gallons of primer and paint
  • A budget at builder, mid and premium grade at October 2026 Ontario rates, per trade and per square foot of floor
  • The twelve-line scope to send to three contractors so the quotes come back comparable
  • The allowance check, if there is a builder’s contract to hold it against
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Already have quotes? Read what the review covers.

If your house is in Simcoe County, Muskoka or the Georgian Bay area and the job ends up going to a contractor we introduce, the review fee comes off the introduction. Quotes with more than three companies or combined drywall-and-paint packages over 5,000 sq ft are quoted separately; email first.

How it works

  1. Order. Pay by card on the Stripe page. HST is added at checkout; you get an emailed receipt and a page telling you exactly what to send.
  2. Send the paper and the pictures. Reply to the receipt email with the quotes as PDFs or clear phone photos, your room list (the one the calculator writes is ideal), and a photo of a typical room and of any wall you are worried about, under a light held flat to it if you can.
  3. Get the answer. Within three business days: the grid, the area check, the blanks priced, the per-square-foot check, the photo read, and the recommendation with the questions to send back.
  4. Use it. Send the questions, get the revised quotes, sign the right one. Most weeks the cheap quote comes back $3,000 higher once the blanks are filled, the dear one turns out to include Level 5 you did not ask for, and the middle one wins.

What it is not

It is not a site inspection. Nobody measures your house for $99; the quotes, your room list and your photos are what gets read. If the photos show something that needs a person in the room (a wall that looks loose, a ceiling that looks wet, a textured ceiling in a 1975 house), it says so and says who to call first. It is not a binding price, a specification for the contractor, or a recommendation of a company. It is a builder’s reading of the paper you already have, which is the thing nobody else will give you.

What gets found, most weeks

  • A quote priced per square foot of floor on a job where the other two priced the walls, so the cheap number is a third of the real one.
  • “Taped and sanded” with no level, on a house with pot lights in every ceiling.
  • Painting quotes with no primer, or “paint and primer in one” on new drywall.
  • Ceilings, closets, the stairwell and the doors each missing from a different quote.
  • Regular 1/2 in. board on 24-in. truss ceilings, in the one quote that mentioned board at all.
  • A basement with 38 bulkhead corners and no corner count on any quote.
  • Photos of seams that are flashing (paint) sent by a homeowner who was about to sue the taper.

Before you order, the free version

The twelve-line grid is on the site and you can fill it in yourself. The flashlight test sorts taping defects from paint defects. If the grid gives you a clear answer, keep the $99. If two quotes are both complete and $4,000 apart and you cannot see why, that is what the review is for.

Questions people ask

Can you review a quote for just painting, or just taping?

Yes. Any combination of drywall, taping and painting quotes, up to three documents. A single quote on its own gets the same grid and the questions to send back.

Will you tell me which contractor to use?

I will tell you which quote is the one to sign, and why, and what to ask before you do. I do not recommend companies and I do not take a commission.

What if the work is already done and the walls look wrong?

Send the photos and the invoices. The review tells you which defects are the taper’s and which are the painter’s, with the standard behind each, which is what you need before you write to either of them. Who is responsible.

Is the fee refundable?

If I cannot read what you send (illegible photos, a quote with no scope at all), I will say so before starting and refund it. Once the review is written, it is not.

Three pieces of paper, one answer

The grid, the area check and the questions, in three business days, for $99. Then sign the right one.

Order the quote review, $99Back to the section