A client recently asked me to give them a cost to change out the baseboards and casing throughout their home. I have always figured thing as per job, but something like this, I wanted to give them a per linear foot price installed, which includes supplying the material, painting it in my shop with a sprayer, installation, caulking and touchup paint along the top edge of the base and along the edge of the casing. How do you guys go about figuring jobs like this per linear foot? Because of the door casing selected, I have to use 8 foot pieces versus 7 ft.

Negating all of the details of what is involved, what is the best way to go about figuring it per linear foot ?

Don't you have records on how many feet of trim went into a job and how long it took? I don't understand if you are experienced at this why a per foot price would be hard to calculate.

The hard part isn’t figuring out a job, rather it is trying to come up with what I would charge per foot to do the task at hand as I noted above. I have always priced thing as per job, so to turn around and price it per foot is where I am missing the mathematical part about it of how to determine what it would be… For example, if I charge $1000 to do a room of base molding and let’s say that room is a 10 x 10, how could I mathematically figure out what it should be per foot, so I would not need to essentially find out exactly how many linear feet are throughout the entire house. I’m trying to find a quicker way of figuring this out.

Dill,

It is sad we still have contractors who are not willing to share advice with other trades people in the same business. I never understood the point of being a part of this group and not being willing to help our colleagues

Mike:

For this particular project, it sounds as though the lineal foot price is something you want, and is not necessarily wanted by your client. If the scope is finite, by which I mean there is a fixed amount of moldings to be run, finished, and installed, then a by-the-job number is appropriate.

You might consider pricing this the way you always do, and start tracking your time and costs for each molding. After several iterations of the same sort of project, then you can arrive at an average that can pass for a lineal foot price.

I would caution that this can be a trap that lulls you into an ease of estimating that may not reflect your actual costs on a particular project, and so its accuracy may be dubious, unless you do so much of this work that you have a "system", and any variations from standard practice can be averaged out over many projects.

There would also be a step-variable of whether you need to travel and set up for half a days worth of work or two weeks worth of work, and so lineal foot pricing may bite you on smaller projects. Long runs, short runs, number of miters, copes, and returns per lineal foot might be hard to incorporate into a simple number per lineal foot. Lineal foot pricing usually works best for a supply only situation, where shop conditions are easier to control than field conditions.

Price per foot can be helpful if a client is uncertain of the scope of the work, or if work is added or subtracted from the original scope. Myself, I like to have a complete picture of the project in question before I give a price.

Maybe not be what you are looking for, but I hope it helps.

TonyF

Tony, that makes EXACT and complete sense and was exactly what I was looking for, so ty! You’re right, I don’t do this on a regular basis at all, so it was a bit confusing on the best way to approach this

I’ll just stick to the cost being a per job, vs per LF.

Thx!

Mike, maybe it would be safer to bid this job T & M . good luck

The hot air you speak of is extremely plentiful .Aside from warming the entire shop its also being used in the spray booth to assist in drying the coatings.

Tony basically covered it all. 25+ ground up GC and now full time shop and we never did the type of work that would every play well with per-unit pricing. Cost per door hung, per sheet of sheetrock, per block laid, brick laid, and so on.

Unit pricing in my opinion really only works when your being fed decent volumes of somewhat fixed work. Hanging doors and trimming out entire new or re-hab homes, having a contractor that is feeding you decent size runs of whatever it is your doing where, by the end, your travel, setup, take down, cleanup, is embedded in the per unit price. Its handy that way for all parties in that the GC can bid jobs knowing theres 42 doors and 2800' of trim and he knows you'll be in a given range.

Doesnt play so well with varied work and things like touching up paint/caulking etc..

You get snippy, we all do, but basically Rich said all this in his reply you just took it the wrong way.

We've all been there. We'd all love to know what our competitors are charging so we are comfortable we have a chanve at getting the job and are not leaving money on the table. The problem with online forums is these questions come up constantly and its nearly impossible to get any viable numbers from someone who may be working in downton Los Angeles, Rodeo Drive, Beverly Hills, NYC, or back water Louisana in the middle of no where. No matter what you read on the internet there simply are not national numbers much especially labor.

Well Dill Weed, what per price foot did you give him? Or do you prefer to both attack someone and not answer a question. I have no idea how you can't calculate a per foot price when you know what the trim costs and how long it took you to do jobs in the past. On a past job it took 6 days to hang 1,000 feet of trim. That's a little over 20' an hour. 1,000 foot of trim costs $2,000. So 20 times your hourly rate plus $2 per foot, plus profit. Pretty simple math. To use someone else's per foot price is a quick trip to the poorhouse. We have no idea what overhead the OP charges and where he lives. There is not national overhead rate for trim carpenters. A trim carpenter in Chicago, IL is not going to be able to live on the rate charged in a little farm town called Ohio, IL.

This isn't junior high school Dill Weed. Why don't you identify yourself so we can see who is really fixated on me.

Why don’t all of you who are being Karen’s on my thread, stop. If you feel the need to come onto the Internet to bitch about something, go onto Facebook.

My comments about being surprised that calculating the quote by lineal feet is hard for a business owner is because of the all the math and calculations that go on every hour of every day in business. It's a necessary skill to run a business.

RichC. I do appreciate your input, but I would appreciate everyone involved in this pissing contest and that means everyone, please stop. I posted what I said to get some professional information and clearly it is turned into a battle of wits. I appreciate any and all feedback that is given toward my actual posting, But please, to everyone, please stop pissing match

I figure it take 1 hour per corner, and if the room is longer than 15' I add 1 hour per joint. for crown molding plus the material price. Point 75 hour per corner for base and .50 for shoe. That includes set up tools, cope or miter, minor caulking and clean-up. More for heights above 8 feet. must add 50% to material price. to cover nails, glue and profit.

People who say they want all their trim replaced are usually tire kickers anyway. I would do it tm and give them an estimate of how many opening you will do/hour.

Peter, you’re absolutely right. I sold them on high quality, customer service and doing things right the first time, and they blatantly said they are going to take a pass, because they are going to go with a cheaper route. I am of the opinion, if you want a poor quality and a crappy job, hire a handyman and not a professional custom cabinetry maker with 27 years behind me. I don’t set up shop in peoples homes to spray the trim and doors in their garage. I have a professional spray booth in my shop.