License Question

Painter.Josh

Hey guys...
Was curious about the licensing in your state.
I live in Michigan, where there is a specific contractor's license for painting and, off course the general contrator, which covers everything.
In Michigan, if you do a residential paint job bidded for over 600.00, you are required by the state to be a licensed painting contractor, or general contractor. (90% of the painters in my area are not).

Yet for any commercial job, regardless of size, doesnt required any licensing at all. Last summer I did a repaint on a 108 unit apartment complex. At no time there were any questions about licensing.

Being curious about this, I asked a lawyer I deal with. After he checked into it, he told me that it not only applies to painting but all other contracting fields in the state of Michigan.
Basically saying, that if I went to paint a 5000.00 residential exterior, the state of Michigan requires me to be licensed.
Yet if I wanted to bid the job for construction of a new Home Depot store (as if), the state requires no licensing of me at all, because it's a commerical job.

Just got a little chuckle from this.
Wondering what the contracting laws were in your guys' states?

Jeffrence

Here in WA you must be licensed to do both residential and commercial. Seems like a strange law to me that you can do commercial without a license but must have one for residential.

Grumpy

Strange that they require residential licensing but not commercial licensing. I can understand why though. Commercial buyers are usually better schooled than residential buyers and commercial buyers usually lock the contractor or sub contractor into basically "signing their life away" type agreements.

In IL we need licensing to be a residential roofer and a seperate license to be a commerciall roofer.

Painter.Josh

That is true. The commercial job paper work could feel a whole file cabinet at times. So it is basically on the commercial customer to cover their own behinds.

But the laws in Michigan are quite odd grumpy. You reffered to roofing. Here there are no requirements as far as licensing for commercial roofing.

Glasshousebltr

In IL you have to be licensed to roof and plumb, but if your doing elec. or or any other type of building, what the hell. They don't seem to care.

So to size it up, here in Illinois, we don't like water in the bed and we care deeply about where our ******************** goes, but it's not so bad when our roof caves or our home burns down.

Who makes thease rules? :Thumbs:

ProWallGuy

No licenses required for paint/paperhanging in MO, for com. or res.

__________________
Wallpaper Hanger St. Louis
Digital Murals Installation

Painter.Josh

Im moving to MO

Jeffrence

Oh btw, I forgot to mention that in WA you don't have to take a test to get licensed to paint. All you have to do is show minimum $250,000 insurance policy, $6,000 bond and then you pay $100 for the license. You must renew it yearly. Its a no brainer since anybody who is willing to put up the money can do it.