This is a rant!!!!
What is wrong with people. I get called on a big remodeling job (for me).
Archy had great drawings, walk the job and give homeowners a ballpark to see where their budget is. Every thing is good I take plans and say I’ll have an exact price in a week.
Spent 8 hours easy working it all up and I’m within 3% of ballpark. For referance this job is under $50,000.
They got 2 other prices both of which were higher then mine…but guess what?
They didn’t believe the job would really cost that much, and they can’t get the money. After the fact they come clean with exactly how much they have to work with and it doesn’t cover material costs….
I WANT MY WASTED 8 HOURS BACK!
Replies
I feel for you.
You gave the dreaded (oftentimes) ballpark and they seemed available of the loot.
They weren't.
You lose.
If you're lucky to develop a good reputation, after 25 years your prior customers will pre qualify for you. This is indeed a good time.
Best of luck
You're welcome to the couple hours I wasted doing meaningless P.R. today.
Remodeling Contractor just outside the Glass City.
Quittin' Time
I'll share some wasted time with you.
One hour to pick up "as Built" plans from the property management firm at the BellSouth Tower. Pages I really need missing - whereabouts unknown.
Last week 1.5 hours waiting my turn to talk to commercial plans examiner to resolve question on tenant buildout. Saw 3 people, last one told me to get those "as Built" plans and we could go from there.
Today, 1 hour, shuffled from plans examiner to Chief Building Officials office after 2 of them couldn't answer the question. Secretary logged in an appointment with the second in command.
Also today, 5 minutes with the 2nd in charge I have my answer based on a line drawing I had already shown the underlings on the first and second visits and an appointment to have him personally run the plans through when I put the paperwork together.
So, including the travel time, approximately 1 hour, there's 3 hours and 5 minutes that should have taken one round trip of a half hour and about 5 minutes of face time.
Rested up now. Ready to pour and finish another 10 yards tomorrow.
Bill 'em...
I would... Get tired of that nonsense...
Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming....
WOW!!! What a Ride!
What figure did the architect give them? I had a friend who is an architect come by, and before we even discussed the issue of drawings, he started talking numbers based on what we were thinking of doing. He was ethical enough to show us the entire picture before he started his part in case we wanted to back out then.
Geo,
I had the same thing happen early this Spring. I went on 6 quotes in one week. The $ range was $5,000-$45,000. For all apparent reasons it looked as though I was going to set my Summer and Fall schedule with these jobs. After carefully bidding each one: site visits, dig photos, measurements, and pricing mat'ls & labor I figure I had 40+ hrs in all six jobs. Not one of these jobs came to fruition. I granted myself partial vindication when I learned that they did not chose another contractor, but got sticker shock and never had any work done by me or others.
Business now has rebounded and life is good. But your thread opened up all those old (but not forgotten) wounds. Which leads me to my favorite phrase "I like people , I just do better without them". I have termed all my potential customers who get sticker shock as the "looky-loos".
Well I'm done. Thanks for letting me clear the air...its a bit cathartic. Good luck with your future quotes. As it turned out if I had gotten those jobs I would not be working with my present customer. I replaced 38 windows with Pella units and now I'm doing a 50K kitchen for her.
MES
I don't think ANYONE in the construction business gets by without this happening to them occasionally.
A friend from high school brought me a print for a house he wanted to build. It was drawn by a local idiot whom I've dealt with many times. He tends to draw houses bigger and bigger, without any thought as to whether or not the HO can afford it.
I told the guy his house had problems and would be expensive. Like no bearing had been provided for most of the 2nd floor. High pitches, piggyback trusses, wasted space, etc.
But he swore he was serious about building the house, and wanted me to estimate it.
So I spent the better part of a week working on it as best as I could. Drawing in where he needed beams and posts. Figuring out how to get enough clearance for the 2nd floor rooms under the roof.
I cam up with a price and brought it all back to him. He said the bids were coming in too high, so he was gonna have to PAY the print-drawing jerk to re-draw it.
He re-draws it, and I re-bid the thing again. (It still has problems)
What he hadn't told me was that he'd had another truss company bid the trusses. He ended up buying the trusses from them because they were a little cheaper.
Turns out what they did was cheaper, but he lost a lot of headroom in his 2nd floor bedrooms.
I had gone out of my way to help him out, and ended up wasting a truckload of time for nothing.
Shouldn't there be a shorter word for "monosyllabic"?
I just had a similar situation. Guy I knew in the neighborhood where we grew up moved back into his parents old house. Guy asked me to make drawings for an addition. I met with him and his family three or four times for a couple hours each time to refine the plans (spent several more hours between times in thinking and drawing). Got to where I had (I thought) what they wanted and told them I was working for a remodeler and they could talk to him about the construction and get a price if they didn't already have someone else in mind. (I'd also been talking about the project with the remodeler.) So they meet and the next day on another job, the guy I work for says, "Oh, by the way, I talked your friends out of the second floor addition; makes it easier. Would have been hard to tie into the existing roof." I was so ticked off.
Turns out he expanded a bath into and did away with the spare bedroom they were using as a computer room and added a walk-in closet that I think will be too small to actually walk into. Later he told me, "I'm still having trouble with the upstairs part of that remodel--bathtub may not fit well where I wanted it to go, and then the doorway is too small; maybe I could...." I just said, "Hmmm...ummm..." I'm not get involved again with the design phase just to be knocked down again. The guy I work for is a real nice and honest person, but just didn't see that he had trampled all over me. I think he thought I should have just got out of the way and let him design it to begin with. (I love to design houses, so that part was worth it). ANyway, still think my plan was better and am still stinging.
You got burnt by the dreaded "window shoppers"
Anything over 10 thousand you should get from the client what kind of budget they have in mind. Then work from there. Some times you can tailor the job to fit their budget.
I dont like to play the poker face game. That only means they're hoping to get more for less.
Then tell them you have many hours ahead of you to get bids from subs and price out materials and you are'nt doing it for free. You at least need a deposit to get the project moving.
What if a larger contractor hired a full time estimator? That estimator"s time would be figured into "overhead", right? So is there some way you can figure a certain ammount of your time as overhead? That way you get paid for at least some of those hours you spend bidding, doing warrenty work, investigating new products, talking with your banker, subs, or potential customers?
I bet if you keep track of the hours you spend doing this type stuff for the next two or three years you'll be surprised how easy it is to bump your overhead markup enough to compensate yourself for those hours. Then those hours just become part of your weekly routine, instead of an interuption of your vocation. We all know how unsatisfactory it is dealing with someone we are interupting.
I sympathize - that is a terrible thing, especially when you are self employed and every minute counts. But it brings up a question for me as a homeowner - how are we supposed to know how much a job is supposed to cost? How can we avoid sticker shock?
For example, 4 years ago we put an addition onto our house. The architect we hired for it gave us no indication of expected costs. He didn't want to manage the project (too small) so it was up to us to find out costs. The GCs we contacted gave us widely varying estimates, and yes, we wasted their time because we ended up picking none of them. One was TOO low, one was really high but didn't break it out any so we could know what was costing us. We had requested that they break it up a little (demo, concrete, stairs, materials, etc for the 2 parts of the addition) so we could eliminate things from the design if necessary, but they just gave us one number. The guy in the middle didn't return calls. So, how were we supposed to know the cost going in? We had no idea if it would cost $5,000 or $50,000.
Now we are saving to redo our plumbing, replacing galvanized pipe as well as redirecting the main story's waste to connect directly to the sewer and avoid the ejection pump, replacing all the major fixtures, fixing a leaking shower pan, etc. How are we supposed to have a clue how much this will cost us? Are we saving too little to do the job? I have no idea. I'm just gonna save up what seems like a lot of money and then call somebody. If he gives me a number that is way high for what I've allotted, then I've wasted his time, because I'll need to save more.
I'll end up wasting a lot less of his time if he gives me a ballpark figure up front like you did. That would be it for me.
Sorry again about your wasted time.
Out of the last two weeks, I've spent more than 20 hours working on one trim estimate. I've also spent over 6 hours in meetings with the builders and architects of this same project. 7,000sq' remodel/addition. At the last meeting, I find out the architects had told the clients they could do this for $600,000. My bid was over $40,000 just for labor & supplies. $10,000 for one room alone. Needless to say, there was some major freaking out going. Point is, the homeowners aren't the only ones who need to be qualified.
On the other hand, every time I do a big estimate, I get better at it. I just cranked out a nice 15 grand one in a leisurely six hours. One of these days, all this practice will actually make me some moola<G> Don't worry, we can fix that later!
Not to poo on your rant, but as a non-pro how should I handle getting bids for projects?
We did a kitchen remodel 2 years ago in which I did most of the work (I had the cabinets and counter top built and installed). We had gotten 4 bids for the work, ended up going with the a middle priced bid (mostly because I liked the guy and he seemed easy to work with and not scared that HO was going to be doing the rest of the work around him). Once we had decided that he was the guy we either sent the other bidders a letter, or a phone call saying that did not get the bid. We didn't pay for their bidding time. Trying to see both sides of the coin.
Start by reading this thread. The posters asked a similar questions as yours.
http://forums.taunton.com/n/mb/forward.asp?webtag=tp-breaktime&msg=44575.1Whenever you are asked if you can do a job, tell'em "Certainly, I can!" Then get busy and find out how to do it. T. Roosevelt