Picking the right Painter with Ashley Wade Cline from the Monroe Painting Company

All right, welcome to The Homeowner Show. We're gonna have a great episode tonight. Real quick, I want to let everybody know that we have a big event coming up on the 18th. Annette, we're gonna be giving away this. It is a Casseta wireless hub system for your home. It is the system that you need to install smart lighting on your entire house. It is expandable. You can put as many switches on it as you want. This one actually comes— let me see if I can get it open— comes with 2 switches and 2 Pico devices as well as the hub. It is fantastic. I'm sure our electrician friends have come across these before. I have it in my house, love it. Can

control every light in my home from my phone. Um, we're going to be giving this away as well as I think it's like $400 worth of accessories that go along with the Cassetta at the event on the 18th. And for those of you that are here live tonight, I'm gonna ask a question here in just a second to get a thumbs up or a thumbs down. That will enter you for a chance to win this at the event on the 18th. Sound good? You can say yes, that's fine. Okay. Thank you. Okay, so here's the question. If you follow the show at all, you've heard me talking about labor statistics that have been going on in the economy right now. And one of

the ones is that they're trying to increase unemployment in order to slow, uh, the, you know, inflation that's going on. So I was listening to an interview today about somebody talking about employment. How many of you in here are having trouble finding employees? Yes, lots of hands. Many, many. Um, so here's the question. I'm going to ask you what kind of employee. I'm going to give some specifics. So, here's the first one. Would you rather— this is a would you rather question— would you rather hire a 50-year-old retired veteran with no skills, okay, in your field, 50-year-old retired veteran with no skills, or a 27-year-old with an MBA for your business? So, if you would hire the veteran, thumbs up. If you would hire the MBA, thumbs down. I want to get the statistics

in the chat. All right, put them in, put them in the chat on the live feed. If you're out there watching, you're not here live with us, you can participate too. Thumbs up, thumbs down. Let us know who you would hire. We've got Ashley Wade Klein, Monroe Painting, here with us tonight. She's a little nervous, which is okay, because most everybody here has been on the show and none of them have died. Okay, that's good. So give it— give us a little history. How did you even get into this business? Well, my husband has been in the painting field since he was 18. We're 37 now. Okay. And he also worked on the other aspect of being in

Home Depot and selling paint, right? Okay. Yeah. So, but he is an artist. He might not say that himself, but he truly is. He's super talented. So his attention to detail is amazing. And that's basically— so we moved to The Woodlands right after Harvey. I'm actually from The Woodlands though. Okay. Well, I guess nobody's really from The Woodlands, but I grew up around— You've been here your whole life. Yeah, since 1994. The Woodlands Mall had just been built. But yeah, so we met in Austin and we both were living in Fort Worth after that and had been in like a restaurant industry. Yeah. Uh, I was a server, bartender. He was a cook when he went to culinary school, but he also did art at school as well. We moved here

and he just didn't want to cook anymore and like, well, what can we do next, you know? So painting was the next thing because he kind of helped out a retired guy who did little side jobs but needed some help on the weekends, and so he would help him. So when we moved here, did the cook thing for a little bit, and we were just like, no, you know, try and figure something out. He worked with other contractors for painting companies, and we just saw like how poorly run, I guess, they were. Yeah. You know, for us as being an— or my husband being an hourly employee, you know, sometimes it would be exterior painting. Well, it was raining all week, so how are we

gonna be able to pay rent, you know, that week or that month? So obviously the owner didn't care because he's still making money, you know. Yeah. So, I mean, so yeah, so that was Yeah, it was pretty bad. So we just— Did you guys start off just doing exterior? No, no. He did interior, cabinets, exterior, but he would— the owner would do a lot of exterior when it would be raining. So it just kind of threw knives in our budget. I was working as a customer service agent for Alight Solutions. And I worked in office, you know, your regular 8:30 to 5 or whatever job. And it was okay. I mean, I'm used to customer service, but as our company— so he left

the painting company and we were like, well, maybe we can start our own, you know? Yeah. So we got one job and it literally just went from there. We bid the job low so we could get it. It's more money than what we were making hourly. So we were totally happy with that. And customer was super happy, told us about a neighborhood group we should join, joined it, Alden Bridge. And it's about 90% of our business. Yeah. So Alden Bridge, Sterling Ridge, The Woodlands, That's how we started, and we've been in business since December 2017 and have not had a slow period minus when we want to. Oh, that's nice. Yeah. So with, I mean, is there

one that you guys would prefer doing, or you like doing, you like the exterior, the interior, the cabinets? I mean, is there one that you kind of gravitate towards more? I would say, I mean, exterior is fast. a little easier, but during Texas brutal summers, not so much. Sure, yeah. I think my husband was out during the summer in Imperial Oaks and it was 110 degrees and they didn't have any trees. They had like a dog run, but that was literally the only shade. Spraying dust at that point, right? Yeah, basically, yeah. It's literally drying the moment that it gets out the gun. As far as that, that's easy-ish, but cabinets are really our main thing. We

do lots of interior work as well. I have multiple full interiors right now, but eventually, a few years down the road, I would like to only focus on cabinets if we can. I know that cabinets tend to be, as far as square footage goes, it's a more expensive painting process. Yeah. And is it difficult to explain to people why? Yes, it is. And I mean— So go ahead and do that now. Okay. So there's lots of contractors out there that maybe not, that don't have the same process. A, we have a workshop, so we spray all the doors offsite, which is pretty rare. The only way we would spray onsite is if it was a vacant house and the customer gave us the go-ahead to like set up a spray booth

in the kitchen or in the garage. And that would be only for fastness, you know, like if they want to move in quickly, et cetera, and not have to like deal with us transporting, et cetera. But that's pretty rare. We take all the doors off the hinges, we label them all. We— When you guys are doing that, are you also offering to like change out the hardware? Yes. So not necessarily the hinges. The hinges are as is. If they do want to upgrade to like soft-close hinges, I do have a carpenter who can do that. It wouldn't be something that we personally do. Right. So a specialist. Yeah. Because you have to have a certain like carpentry,

like router bit or something. I don't know. I've even heard that like, it's really difficult. Like if you have like the soft-closing drawers, Yeah, you want to upgrade to those, like, that can be a total pain. And they're really expensive too. Yeah, so, um, they do have those options. I have only had it happen a couple times. Um, for the most part, everybody kind of sticks with their hinges. Um, now sometimes they don't have hardware, like, as far as, like, pulls or knobs, and we can add those for them. That's something we do personally. Um, or if they're changing from one hole to 2 holes for, like, a handle instead of just a knob. And because we can fill the

holes also if they want to, if it's like centered and they want the handle. So that's something we do offer. And even then, like in all of that, it's just a different kind of paint that you're using on cabinets, right? For the most part. Oh, 100%. Yeah. It's just not, it's not what you put on your walls. It's not the exterior stuff. It's just something completely different. Yes. So we have started now offering, it's called Renner. It's an Italian company. It is literally the best cabinet paint out there. Um, it provides the most amazing finish, and you can actually choose a matte finish. So like with the high-end kitchens that want to kind of that flat look, right, but they want that

durability, that's the paint that they would go with rather than like a satin or a semi-gloss. Um, we do still offer, um, we use Emerald Urethane for kind of like the more budget friendly kitchen cabinets. But even then, I mean, our process— I have on our Facebook, I have literally pictures showing the entire process as well as each step as well. So they can see kind of what sets us apart from other contractors. Right. That's what I feel we can communicate to the customer to choose us rather than somebody who is gonna spray all the doors on the hinges and really just not give that proper attention to detail. Yeah. Is that, is that where competition is gonna be difficult for you? Because when people choose a less quality paint, that they can really scale

back their numbers on that. Is that, is that where you're— I mean, we're talking about like a, $2,000 paint job for cabinets versus a $4,000 to $5,000 plus. Okay, yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's about half usually, and I mean, that's a lot of money. Yeah. But the customer has to understand if they really want to improve their kitchen with a quality paint job and not have to get it redone is the main selling point. Yeah, so if for people that you might be talking to out there that, you know, aren't here and Maybe they're not from Texas, they're listening in Portland or England or wherever they're listening to you from. What are some of the biggest mistakes people make when they're selecting someone

to do their painting for them? What are some cautions that people should look out for when they're not hiring someone like you? A, giving a contract with a true bid. writing something down on paper and handing it. Sticking it on a napkin. Yeah. I've seen it before. Second would be if they have social media and a website. I feel like not necessarily even the website, but mainly social media. So I feel like one thing that sets us apart is I literally have videos and pictures showing from day 1 to the end on multiple posts. It's not just, oh, here's one kitchen. Yeah, that I stole from somebody else's page. Yeah, I got you. Google Images. I'm sure you see the person somewhere on— yeah, I got you. Okay. Another thing is asking what products

that contractor is going to use. That's the biggest thing. If they're going to use a contractor-graded paint rather than kind of a higher end. If they're going to take the doors off the hinges and if they're going to roll and brush rather than spray. Those are the main flags, I guess. So roll and brush would be bad and spray would be good? Yeah, for sure. Are there good brands of paint from big box stores? I don't want to call any of them out. Yeah, so we use, like I said, if we're doing kind of a more budget-friendly house, Sherwin-Williams Emerald Urethane is what we use. So it's low VOC, customers don't have to leave their home or take their pets, or have— it's okay if

newborns or infants are in the home. Right. And the primer that we use is urethane-based as well. So again, you're like not dealing with the oil-based primers, you're not dealing with the oil-based paint. Right. So we use Emerald Urethane, it's from— it's like biggest box store, uh, product that we use. Okay. Um, Sherwin-Williams is releasing a new paint, it's called Gallery Series. It's supposed to be really similar to the Renner paint that I was talking about. Yeah, it's going to be more than like a $120 to $150-ish a gallon. Um, yeah, we heard a whoa. Yeah, um, we pay around $70-ish right now per gallon. Now that's not everybody's price, obviously, but personally that's what my price is. So it's about double. Right. Um, but they have, uh, it was supposed to come out in April.

It's now logged, backlogged into May. So we'll see when it comes out. I'm really interested to see how that works because not only is that, uh, Renner paint that I was talking about, uh, have to drive to Humboldt or I have to get it delivered to my house. And for each gallon that I get, I have to pay for it to be tinted, whereas Sherwin-Williams, you just tell them the color and they just make it. Yeah, so it's, it's definitely a game changer and it's worth every penny. Um, but it'll be interesting to see what Sherwin-Williams does when that Gallery Series— Awesome. Well, we've hit about the 15-minute mark here. Okay. Um, wow, it's been 15 minutes. I know. Yeah, right. You were having too much fun. So,

uh, if If you don't mind, do you mind if people reach out to you that maybe don't live here if they have questions? Oh yeah, of course. I'd love to get a hold of you. Maybe they need a painter here in the North Houston area. How do they get a hold of you? Uh, our website has a contact us. It's Monroe Paint, not painting, so monroe-paint-company.com, or, um, our email is monroe-painting-company@gmail.com. Awesome. Is there— did you give a phone number? Oh, phone number, 817- 209-4227. That is my personal cell. I'm happy to answer any questions. Well, they'll be happy to call too. Yeah. So yeah, thank you guys for watching. Appreciate you sitting down with us and answering all the questions. Tune in next time when we have one of these live events, but

definitely come to the event on the 18th. We're sponsoring. Yeah. Oh hey, there you go. So yeah, be there for that. And until next time, we'll see you later.