Do any of you price your finish work on the sqare footage of the house? I need to bid on a small townhouse unit approx. 1200 square feet 3 BR, 2 bath, the only crown is four walls in the den. MDF speedbase, couple of bifolds with maybe half the unit getting QR. Maybe ten prehung hollow cores to hang. All paint grade. It seems like it would be easy for me and the developer just to work up a basic sq/ft. price for this work with a list of separate prices for special situations such as stairrails, chair rail, etc..
Do any of you seasoned veterans price this way? Would anyone like to share what they feel a fair price for the above unit? PS- I’m in S/Central GA
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Not a chance. Why, details. I can go back, look through trim jobs, varying levels of finish, different houses, different builders, and figure what it was "per sf" - I've been 2 bucks a foot, I've been 8.
Basically I think you're doing a disservice to yourself if you try and simplify bidding that way, and someone, either the trimmer or the builder, is gonna get hosed. But if its all just X/sf, nobody knows, and end of the year, you gained, or you lost, nobody knows how, or why, or what to do different.
Track what you do and how long it takes. Take notes. Stick a number on it. Try real hard to be realistic, then run with it, and after the first job doing that, compare actual, vs bid. Tweak. Repeat as necessary.
I tracked every minute of my days for a couple of years, turned it all, eventually, into what amounts to my personal cost book. I still find things I have no idea how to bid. But theres a lot of stuff thats in there now. Usually, I can look at a sheet and say ok, run of the mill for X is 2.65/ft. And this one I'm looking at, its a little more involved, say 10% above average, maybe I want to call it 2.90 on this one. . . not that I'm saying thats how you have to think or go about it, but its what works for me. Which is really the point. Find what works for you, but dont find it by guessing. Find it by tracking and assigning numbers and knowing how you got them so when you have to think about them, raise, lower, whatever, you know you're on the right track.
Real trucks dont have sparkplugs