The drywall was delivered (9000 sqft) by boom truck onto three floors. I’ve got two really experienced guys working for the last two weeks. They have completed the drywall on the second and 3/4 of the third floor and they have not touched the ground floor yet.
I was down to one guy this week (the other had another job to go to). The one guy taped and did a first coat of mud on the second floor between Monday and Tuesday. Wednesday he did about half the skim coating on the same walls.
The job looks really great, but as I am paying by hour and not by the job, and it seems to me that the pace is slower than I expected. Are my expectations unrealistic.
paul
Replies
where do yo live and what are you doing ? skim coat around here would be skim-coat plaster.. you sound like you are talking about drywall taping...
either way the rate is usually by the foot, including materials & labor..
if you're paying by the hour.. who can say what's good and what's bad ? your conditions are not known... if i were hiring my plasterer to skim-coat 9000 sf...they would supply the materials, hang the blue board, and skimcoat the plaster for about $11,000...
drywall would be a little less but not much residential work is done with drywall here since the early '80's
Mike Smith Rhode Island : Design / Build / Repair / Restore
Edited 11/14/2002 5:27:58 PM ET by Mike Smith
Thanks for the quick reply. We are in Ottawa, Canada. Yes, we are talking about the same thing, skin coated plaster. They first taped and plastered the joints and then the skin coat. Is that not the standard way?
I understand that the third floor is taking time with the nasty angles with the attic walls - I've got no problem with that. I was just wondering about the four days (including today) just to tape and skin coat the second floor (around 3000 sqft of wall and ceiling). It might be after six years of working on this place myself, I am getting too eager to move in (we are hoping to be in by Christmas).
The going rate around here seems to be about a buck a sq ft, ready to prime. I bought the drywall, wonderboard, CBU's, mud, tape, screws and corner bead and had it delivered. That was $4200. I sort of figured on another $6000 for the install. By this Friday, they have cost me about $4500 in labour and they still have the first floor and half the third to install.
paul
Here in Western North Carolina, that same 9000 sf would cost at least $30,000 FOR LABOR ONLY, and that's IFF you could find and schedule the labor.
If I had mine to do over again, I woulda sent you a case of your favorite in exchange for a name or three and then paid their travel and a 3-star hotel and woulda been ahead by a long shot.
Jim
and they wudda done it too!Mike Smith Rhode Island : Design / Build / Repair / Restore
oops. Well, hope the T+M Bid has a "not to exceed" clause in it. Here in the midwest, rock is going for $1.10-$1.12/sf installed, taped, sanded. Thats in the area of $10K for your 9000 sq ft.
RW --
Just out of curiosity, what sort of hourly rate would you expect to earn if you were charging about $1.10 psf for sheetrock work out in your neck of the woods?
Thanks,
Ragnar
Heh - this is why I try not to do a lot of it unless its just small patchwork which comes as a byproduct of say, a bath remodel. I don't know for sure what they make, but judging from the local economy and the "going rate" for wages paid welders, carps, etc, as a laborer, they'd get somewhere around $10-$12/hr. My rule of thumb, over 7 sheets, sub. Yeah, nobodys getting rich here. The highest paid blue collars in town are electricians and plumbers. The hour rate there is about $45, but that doesn't mean thats what they take home.
I have no contract. The principle guy I've known for about 15 years. He did the rock on our first starter home then, and has done drywall for my wife's retail store twice, (her landlord moved her a door down after a couple of years).
He has always been excellent and I have always enjoyed working with him. I never had a contract with him, we've always worked based on a handshake.
Ultimately if it ends up costing me few thousand more than it should, it hurts a bit, but life's like that sometimes - my kids will still eat. It just sort of frustrating not seeing a lot of progress over the last few weeks.
paul