Turning down a contractor's bid proposal
robyn393
15 years ago
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frog_hopper
15 years agovhehn
15 years agoRelated Discussions
Contractor bid etiquette
Comments (18)Quote"Are you saying that the rough-in plumbing takes a day, underslab piping takes a day, and trim out takes a day? My bids for plumbing are in the $15,000-$20,000 range. That's a pretty hefty daily rate! " The main water line & house sewer line from the street to the structure plus the interior DWV & water distribution piping under slab are the "rough-in", and yes, the guys are alloted one day to finish that. After the house is dried in and interior walls framed they will return and do the "Stack-out" phase, which is the water lines & DWV lines which will be inside the walls, and here again, the crew is alloted one day to complete that. And when there is to be ABS or Fiberglass tub or showere enclosures they are also installed during the stackout. After the bathroom floors & walls are finished and the kitchen cabinets are in we return a third time to do the "Trim out", which is where we set the sinks, waterclosets and all final valves or trim, and this too is to be done in one day, And those schedules are the same whether its a remodel job or a whole house. So what you see is three days work, but don't think for one monent that all you get for your $20k is 3days. As soon as I get your prints & site plan I have to go to the municipal water & sewer providers to find out exactly where they will be installing the water & sewer taps, then I have to work out the entire water distribution and DWV layout for your job. That generally takes the better part of a day, then I have to go back over the prints and do a complete material workup, right down to the last pipe hanger, roll of solder and gas for the soldering torches, flux, pipe cleaner, glue etc. After I have the material list I have to contact my suppliers to get a confirmed price, so there is another day. I then have to order the material and as it is delivered to the shop we have to package and stage it for your job, so I have the overhead cost of that storage area plus the labor to handle it in the staging area. Now let us consider the cost of the crew. In addition to their wages, there is $600yr per man for drug tests, $4k per man for tuition for the apprenticeship training course at the local college, $90 per copy for the code books and every employee must have one, then there is workmans comp insurance, vacation time & paid holidays and individual safety equipment such as OSHA approved respirators (one for each man), hard hats, hearing protectors, gloves etc. Then we have 1ton 4x4 crew cab pickups with jobbers boxes for $65k each, a one ton dump with heavy equip. trailer $70K + $6K, a backhoe $95k, bobcat $90K mini-trackhoe $75k, ditch-witch trencher $120k and specialty tools such as the Rigid cordless PEX crimper for a mere $1600, oxy-acetylene tote weld torch $350, for brazing copper under slab, Then we have a small truck load of hand tools or cordless and cord type power tools that are supplied by the company plus a large portable generator and lights incase we have to work late into the night or we happen to be on a site where they don't have temporary power setup yet. Add to that the cost of the office & shop, secretary, bean counter, warehouseman, equipment maintenance and fuel, not to mention another $5k a year in licensing fees. Now don't get me wrong, I am not crying in the least, but if the final analysis out of your $20k if I get $300 for my pocket its a good day....See Morecontractor's bid - how specific?
Comments (1)How detailed were your own specs? Do you have every plumbing fixture and floor finish and the level of trimwork and cabinet grade and design figured out? If you have extremely detailed specs and don't get a bid back that is equally detailed, then get more bids. (Always get more bids anyway.) If you don't have very detailed specs, then any contractor's bid is pretty worthless because it'll be based on builder's grade material and you won't have an accurate picture of what your project will cost when you start the inevitable "upgrades". Expect to spend 10-20% of your home's value on a "average" kitchen remodel. That isn't counting your bath redo at all. Factoring in structural changes and adding in square footage will greatly increase that price. Costs are going up and home values are going down, so in some markets, the "simple" addition that you are proposing can well exceed 50% of your home's current market value. That's when it's time to reassess moving all together, or even a teardown....See MoreHelp with managing contractor and KD bidding process
Comments (12)Thank you for your responses! Renovator: There are many projects. Some don't involve the kitchen. Those do not have a designer per say, though some of the kitchen people have commented on the mudroom since it adjoins the kitchen and involves changing the pantry. At least one of the contractors seem to be able to enhance what I want and can just have a carpenter build where needed. One clearly wants a design plan for all of the spaces. For something like coffered ceilings, I think we (us with the contractor, no designer) decide on the molding, # of boxes, and lighting. That job could be combined with changing chandeliers in the dining room and other rooms since an electrician would be needed (and it would be easier to group the tasks into one visit vs. being charged for multiple visits by an electrician. But I'm not sure when we will have the light fixtures picked out. However, if the kitchen is more expensive than expected the coffered ceiling project can be sacrificed. Refinishing the floors, painting and some minor bathroom reno can start before the kitchen reno. However, I am also interviewing a separate floor guy who came highly recommended and a separate painter I came across through another group. The office is the most vague project. I'm getting the impression that it will be too costly to do with the KDs. One person said that we should wait a few years and see what happens with elderly MIL (who will be staying in the downstairs office when she visits) which is partly why we need an upstairs office. I think this project might go to the local cabinet builder guy if his costs come in better, One person said just buy furniture. However, we have such a mish mash right now and really needed a lot more filing space and organization that I felt like we needed something more custom. The office is a sore point for us as we have papers everywhere and not enough places to put them. Trying to scan more but we need a better computer, more virtual storage, etc. and our current printer/scanner which is only a few years old isn't working that well. But I digress Greendesigns, so maybe what you are saying is that I decide on the contractor for phases of the entire work (which are discreet projects) and that the kitchen gets decided last, after I pick a designer? Or if the estimates for the kitchen contractor job are dramatically different, maybe I could narrow it down to finalists and then only ask two to fine tune estimates vs. four contractors? But I don't want to get caught short. I think two of the contractors are juggling things so I don't want it to turn out that they can't do my job once we set a timetable. Also, for something like changing light fixtures should I get a separate handyman or just tack it on to one of the other jobs that involves an electrician? Would a handyman charge less or would that be offset by a separate visit? Thank you both!...See MoreHow did your contractor put together his bid?
Comments (14)I know all about small additions with kitchens that equal big bucks! Although mine is a little larger than 50 square feet, but not by much. It is depressing. I feel like we followed our architect's lead and got led down a rosy path but also got some very good professional judgment (as well as nice work) so it's confusing. If the estimate is based on the architect's drawings and specifications then it should be apples to apples in comparing the bids. If you haven't completed decisions on things like appliances and fixtures you can get all the bids without those (which you can get costs for easily anyway) just to make sure they are pricing the same thing. In our case the architect said that the different firms they recommended were all going to come in around the same cost and the same quality and since we really liked one over the others that's who we went with to get a bid and move forward (we're supposed to start in June). The problems for us really started with the one *estimate* we got (different GC) which was terribly LOW compared to reality. This was what we based our initial decisions on. This started us on the path to having plans drawn up that completely and overwhelming exceeded our budget. Now we're in what I hope are our last throes of making changes to get ready to rumble. By the way, the guy who did the low-balled estimate later would not bid the job unless either he was the only bid we were getting (of course we could still have rejected him and moved on) OR we paid him $3,500 to prepare the bid. It would have been interesting to have had him bid on the job since I think his estimate was 50% off (a poor basis for us to have made decisions)! Later we found out that the architect expected that GC's bid would be off by 20%....See Morerobyn393
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