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I’m in the process of estimating some finish work as a sub to a local general contractor in his new development. I’m looking for ideas on how to structure the pricing for different facets of the work so I can quickly estimate the costs on what I hope will involve several projects.
The houses are fairly simply finished and I already know I will develop unit costs for hanging and casing doors and lineal foot costs for running the base.
One real area of concern is how to price setting the cabinets and vanities. I imagine a set cost per lineal foot would be the easiest way to go, but I can forsee problems with going that route. There are other areas like closet finishing that also are difficult to quantify. I’d like some suggestions for pricing schemes others use.
Maybe some of you who are familiar with tract subcontracting can shed some light on your practices? I’m not so much looking for hard dollar prices (although would be interested in them for comparison’s sake) but am looking more for a format to follow for the estimating and billing.
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Dick,
Good question. I have priced installation of cabinets based on lineal foot and have done ok. Problem with lineal foot pricing include tall cabinets, cabinets that have scribes on both ends, big cabinets that are hard for one guy to handle, cabinets that have endpanels that you have to scribe and attach, cabinets with alot of plugin/plumbing holes in the back of them. And if you are going to seperate all of this out for your bid you had better develope a method of tracking your performance or time for each of these variables. Some times less is more. Straight price by the box or lineal foot with an eye on what time you think it will take. Finally if you are doing base, case, doors, cabinet setting etc. build yourself a bank of hours in your bid that you can draw from if need be or contribute to if one phase goes faster than you thought. One bank of hours for the hole project not for each phase. A bank of hours for each phase would result in to much slack and you may not get the bid. Hope this helps. Good Luck,
Dormer
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I'm in the process of estimating some finish work as a sub to a local general contractor in his new development. I'm looking for ideas on how to structure the pricing for different facets of the work so I can quickly estimate the costs on what I hope will involve several projects.
The houses are fairly simply finished and I already know I will develop unit costs for hanging and casing doors and lineal foot costs for running the base.
One real area of concern is how to price setting the cabinets and vanities. I imagine a set cost per lineal foot would be the easiest way to go, but I can forsee problems with going that route. There are other areas like closet finishing that also are difficult to quantify. I'd like some suggestions for pricing schemes others use.
Maybe some of you who are familiar with tract subcontracting can shed some light on your practices? I'm not so much looking for hard dollar prices (although would be interested in them for comparison's sake) but am looking more for a format to follow for the estimating and billing.
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Dick I set cabinets by the piece. Each cabinet is a differant price ie........wall cabnets, vanities,(same as sink cabinets) base cabinets. Counter tops are done on lin. ft. Base is by lin ft.........so much for one piece base, add so much for shoe and cap ect.....ect.....ect. We always have to deal with scribes on the ends. This works well on most work on high end stuff I spend more time on looking at what needs to be done and job schedule.