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So I've been in the carpentry business about a year now and I've just quoted a friend a price for 450sq ft of vinyl plank flooring, and 225 linear ft of trim and my price was $320, based on two days to remove, install and clean up at $20 per hour. She balked hard at the price and said she would have to shop around. I think this is largely because she knows my hourly rate at my normal carpentry job, which is less than $20.

Now, suffice to say I know what I'm doing. I work for peanuts because I am learning from a master, and I'm kinda driving a truck around for free so... But when I work on my own, I charge more. This isn't my first rodeo. Maybe like my eighth or ninth?

Anyhoo, just wondering if anyone out there is a carpenter or an apprentice like me who works solo and has had problems with clients in the past and how you've dealt with them. Any of the trades I suppose could weigh in on this. Should I even bother doing this job if the client is so upset by such a cheap quote? What if she refuses to pay me?

To put it into perspective for the non-tradespeople. A job like this is usually charged by the foot and the going rates for a professional job are about $2.50 per foot, square or linear. I'm asking for about 52 cents a foot.

Thoughts? Opinions? Onions?!

If the 'pros' charge five times as much as you are, she'll come around once she sees their quotes.

Are you sleeping with her? No? Your price is $2.50/ft, take it or leave it. Don't even consider giving people discounts unless you really like them.

Ya, keep deep discounts for very close friends/family, and even amongst your close friends, keep it on the down low and be selective. Once you get pegged as the “discount guy”, they’ll expect it all the time. Don’t be that guy. I’ve seen friends get walked all over.

Also, why go so deep of an undercut on the pros? 8edit for bad maths!* A fraction of what they ask seems excessively cheap for your time. If your doing this on your own time, let her know that your taking time away from your friends/family etc and thats valuable. Don’t be afraid to walk, either, unless you are in a life or death money situation, but if that were the case, you wouldn’t be doing the job for so cheap?

Get some sort of contract or deposit, if you are worried about nonpayment.

I work in the powersports industry, but the concept is the same. I understand the drive to be a nice guy and hook someone up, but that doesn’t pay the bills. In my case, “Friends” want gak all the time at dealer cost, like I’m in the business to break even. feth em.

And be careful with doing jobs on the side, if the guy you are training under feels that you are stealing customers, you may lose an opportunity. Thats a pretty big bone of contention with mechanics and my boss at the shop.

Yeah, I told her that I couldn't do it for any lower than that. I actually had my boss come in and look at the place as a job for us to do, but he wasn't very interested. We're more of the build it all ourselves types, so renos are kind of a easy money grab that we only do between permits. I certainly don't want to cut out my boss since he is a 30 year pro and I have much to learn. I've long since decided carpentry to be my career (as opposed to a job) so that aspect is always in my mind.

And no Peregrine, I'm not sleeping with her. I just wanted a quick bit of cash and figured a low quote would seal the deal. Flooring is easy peasy stuff and I have a lot of experience with it. I was planning on spending it all on beer and Warhammer. In that order.

But alas she now wants to wait another week so I'm thinking I can safely turn her down. I think we are going to get two permits at once in the next week or two and then we will be working six and ten.

I found that working for friends and family was the quickest way to loose friends and family. I done 10 or so jobs (as a chippy) and only one of them ended happily. I also agree with Peregrine, never, ever charge a massively low discount, knock off 10-20% if you feel you really must but anymore is just bad business.

If she's not actually done anything to find out the cost of the project before it's not unreasonable for her to have 'whoa that's far more than I expected, can I afford it?' response

just because she's a friend you shouldn't expect her to immediately say yes, any more than you should for any client

Let her have a look around and get some more quotes and she'll find out you are offering a reasonable price, she might come back to you, she might realise she can't afford the project in it's current form

just make sure if she does say yes to you a contract is signed and payment is made in your normal way as friends/family handshake only deals can easily turn bad

Consider this a rookie mistake I suppose. One that won't happen again. My quick beer and models scheme has turned into more of a pain in the butt than I anticipated. I also found out she offered to job to a other mutual friend who said he would work for a couple flats of beer and she turned that down too. We drink Lucky Lager ffs! It's nearly a buck a can!

So, two lessons. Quote fairly for myself and... Drink better beer.

$20/hr is freakin' peanuts. Your friend will quickly learn that shopping around.

What part of Canada are you? West coast (best coast ) construction is BOOMING right now. Show up on time, every day, and you can practically name your price.

So, basically, she wanted it for free because, reasons, I guess.
Tell her she missed her chance.

As a long time business owner, let me say; never give discounts. It devalues your brand.

Friends and family should respect your need to get paid and not need a discount.

 darkcloak wrote:
Consider this a rookie mistake I suppose. One that won't happen again. My quick beer and models scheme has turned into more of a pain in the butt than I anticipated. I also found out she offered to job to a other mutual friend who said he would work for a couple flats of beer and she turned that down too. We drink Lucky Lager ffs! It's nearly a buck a can!

So, two lessons. Quote fairly for myself and... Drink better beer.

You have to be careful with side work, I've had friends whose side work ended up consuming more of their time and effort than their regular job. Give an honest quote that makes the job worth your time and don't sweat it if people don't hire you. You're already giving a huge discount by just quoting materials and labor. If you were running your own shop instead of just hiring yourself out you'd be charging an additional 30% for labor burden, possibly a trip fee, supervision fee depending on the size of the job, adding X% to the materials cost as a contingency, etc. People are just ignorant of the real costs of things. It's like when people go to a restaurant and are incredulous that their lunch cost $15 or whatever for something they could make themselves for a lot less because they're not realizing that if they had to create and run a business to make that lunch they'd be charging a similar price too.

A few thoughts (some repeated from above)

1) Most people have no idea what anything costs outside of things they deal with regularly. So they often can get early quotes for work and be shocked at how high the costs are. A couple of recessions hasn't helped as its put costs for a lot of things way up above what they once were and for work like this if she hsa ever had it done long in the past the whole market would have been different.
So a bit of shock is no surprise

2) Many people act shocked in the hope that you back down on the price; because they have no idea what your profit margins are (and honestly don't care) but they assume its mostly profit. So they expect some haggling room on big order things. Price matching, haggling, just generally complaining etc....

NOTE this can be worse when working for friends/family because they sort of want a mates-rate that's dirt cheap!


3) Mates rates are a nightmare waiting to happen. First up it devalues your product; if you charge $200 and the company down the road costs $500 then they will highlight every failure from you being that you're undercharging because you're not as good as the other company.
Also as said sometimes they can go way over time scales, so suddenly you're being underpaid on a big project that you have to eat into proper paid time to finish; or you've got to work weekends and off-hours to get it done in a good span of time - that puts st rain on both sides of the relationshp.

4) Charging less because you are getting started means any market you build is going to be based on that lower rate. Any referrals based on that lower rate. It means when you raise your price because you're good now you will have to start all over again and lose most of that market you've already build.
In addition it devalues the product in general as you're undercutting the other firms; but also you're undercutting yourself as well because you know you've got to charge similar rates to make it work as a business.



As you've given a quote for this chalk it up as a lesson if you can and if your friend hires you do the work as a once off.

No idea what the prices are like in Canada, but assuming there are no tax avoidance shenanigans going on, that is very cheap. I'd expect a company to charge me a rate of about 5-7 times that much (60-80ish Euros) for an hour of a journeyman's work, more for a master's hour. I mean, when my car needs some work, I pay about 120 Euros an hour at my dealership, and I drive a Volvo, not a BMW.

So yeah, in my eyes, given that you're in one of the richer first world countries, your work is stupidly cheap and you friend won't find a cheaper solution beyond doing it herself.

That said, I'm not a fan of mates rates. I'd either charge them full price or a few percent off or do it for free, but don't undersell yourself, that's going to come back in some way or other.

Remember your not running a charity

As a tile specialist, I've quoted people jobs on the cheap. I enjoy my job and I don't consider work, so I don't charge much for doing extra work besides my employed role in a company.

And after I've quoted people cheap rates, they've ignored me.

I learned later from the home owners themselves, after they've paid someone else to do the work at a much higher cost, that they assumed my work would be crap because I charge so little.

For a 20 square foot backsplash I charge 240 bucks, and I throw in the mastic (glue) for free. I start work at 8 am and finish the job by 4 pm. Other people charge 400 or 600 bucks for lesser quality jobs.

So you see.... the problem goes both ways.

The point of my post is actually this - every customer is different, and you will not find a constant between various people. You just have to set your own standards, and stick to them. You are the only constant.

ingtaer wrote:I found that working for friends and family was the quickest way to loose friends and family. I done 10 or so jobs (as a chippy) and only one of them ended happily. I also agree with Peregrine, never, ever charge a massively low discount, knock off 10-20% if you feel you really must but anymore is just bad business.

Yup, either do it for free or at full price. The first works if it's a small favour for a friend (when it's just not worth the hassle of getting money involved, kinda like when helping a friend move) or they have a real problem and really need your help (everybody helps their friends in need if they can). But in general, if they want your work, go with the full price. With a heavy discount they get the "friend bonus" but also get to treat you like a regular contractor and can end up demanding all kinds of changes/improvements just because "they are paying". if you mix social norms (favour for a friend) with market norms (your work and money gets involved) things tend to get complicated. It's easier to just pick a side and go with it, thus do it for free or at full price. A heavy discount just pushes your favour from ”friends helping each other out" into an actual financial transactions and the expectation for both are different.

I'll second the advice given above.
Either do it for free or for full price.
Last month the little old lady who lives next door asked me to look at some plumbing. She's a sweetheart so I checked it out. Needs done asap, inexpensive material cost but labor intensive.
So I fixed it. Cost me $50 and ten hours. She watches my dog when I'm outta town, she's a great neighbor and that would have been quite the burden on a retired librarian's income.
Worth every penny.

If she was the neighbors on the other side of my house? I would have quoted them $500. The same amount I'd quote for anyone else with that same repair. It's really the only fair system.

XuQishi wrote:
No idea what the prices are like in Canada, but assuming there are no tax avoidance shenanigans going on, that is very cheap. I'd expect a company to charge me a rate of about 5-7 times that much (60-80ish Euros) for an hour of a journeyman's work, more for a master's hour. I mean, when my car needs some work, I pay about 120 Euros an hour at my dealership, and I drive a Volvo, not a BMW.

So yeah, in my eyes, given that you're in one of the richer first world countries, your work is stupidly cheap and you friend won't find a cheaper solution beyond doing it herself.

That said, I'm not a fan of mates rates. I'd either charge them full price or a few percent off or do it for free, but don't undersell yourself, that's going to come back in some way or other.

I agree, 20$ is a gift. Canada needs to pay it's workers more.

Not a trades person like you are but I do often have to deal with contracted work as a performer.

I am echoing the discount/free work sentiment that it only hurts you in the long run.
Don't undercut yourself and just remind people that someone else may do it for cheaper but you also get the cheaper quality as well.
Let them know, in advance, that this is your job and you need to pay the bills.

We, and people who we have worked with, usually have the contract laid out in advanced so people know what to expect and how much we charge.

 Peregrine wrote:
Are you sleeping with her? No? Your price is $2.50/ft, take it or leave it. Don't even consider giving people discounts unless you really like them.

This so hard. My dad is an independent contractor and he runs into that crap all the time. It took him a few years to build up a base of clients but he does pretty constant work now, but dealt with that a lot to get there. He still does, people think a job is going to cost X amount because they don't actually know what the work entails. He just tells them go ahead and shop around here's my card,give me a call when you realize my price is incredibly fair