Pricing

I price my work based on time and materials. That is, I charge an hourly rate for my work.

Whenever I put together an estimate for a given job, I judge as close as I can how long the job will take and write this up to give you a ball park estimate of the total cost of the job.

I try to make this as accurate as I can, and even estimate it a little long if possible, so that I can complete within the time frame I've given you.

I do this as well for materials.

Most of the time I can complete any given job under my estimate, however the job can take longer depending on how complicated it is.

Why do I do this?

A lot of homeowners look for a flat rate bid, so they know exactly what a job will cost up front.

This is well and good, but it immediately puts your handyman or contractor in position of being your enemy.

His job from that point on is to get the job done as quickly and as cheaply as possible, so he can make the most money from the job.

I've been on many jobs where I've looked at what the homeowner wants done, and I could tell someone else had done work on it previously.

When I ask about it they generally tell me yes, they had someone else work on it before. I ask them then if it was a flat-rate bid, and they generally say yes, it was.

That or they're actually making up to $100 per hour, which isn't disclosed in their bid.

In actual practice what I find in doing flat rate bids is that I lose money on larger jobs, and so try to make it up by bidding smaller jobs for way more money than I should.

This isn't fair to either me or the homeowner.

With a time and materials bid, if a job is small you don't end up paying too much, and if the job is big I don't end up going broke and out of business.

The catch of course with this type of bid is if your handyman tries to milk the job to make as much money as he can.

You can avoid this by checking his references very carefully to make sure you've got someone who is conscientious about getting the work done in a timely manner.

My hourly rate is $35.00 per hour.

I do not take any markups on materials, and give you the receipts for all materials purchased. I do count the time it takes me to pick up materials in my hourly rate.

With all my bids I put a cap on the total hours the job will take me. I guarantee that the job will not extend beyond that many hours.