Viewer Comments:
Can you put more pictures of it on. Need some closeups.Looks nice what I can tell
I couldn't even figure out how to get this picture on, my wife did it. The website kept saying I had to "shrink" the image. Anyway, I charged $2300 and I've got about $400 in materials. The lady I made it for called or emailed just about every day for a week saying how much she liked it, which was cool. But considering the time I put in, I really did'nt make much. The fish are pretty detailed, but not to the point of looking like taxidermy, drawers are through dovetailed, I used nice slides, rubbed in three coats of Watco Danish Oil and made it to last. I was just wondering if you more experienced guys might have an off the cuff idea if I'm in the ballpark. I know it's tough to say without actually seeing it. Any input appreciated.
I think your cost for this dresser is obviously a little low, especially with the carving work and through dovetail drawers. Obviously the material cost on something like this is much lower than the labor time put into it, so the relationship of materials to labor in this case is very insignificant to the final cost. (some woodworkers take the material cost and multiply it by something to get a projects cost) Here is my opinion. If you can get a shop rate of $60 per hour for your work, you are doing very well, at $50 you are doing better but you have to hustle, at $40 an hour you will go out of business if you don't get work, and at $30 an hour you'd better be working with a helper and billing for their time as well and pay them considerably less than you are charging, if you want to make money. If you want to make people happly, keep charging what you charge but don't expect big numbers, although you should be able to get by ok.
My 2 cents, anyhow
Very beautiful dresser. How many hours did spend on it? You can use that number and multiply it by the hourly rates posted by the other commentor to get ballpark numbers. If I were to price this project without the hand carving, (also assuming undermount BB slides, solid oak drawer boxes, through dovetails etc.), it would run between $2800 - $3200. Since I don't have carving skills like yours, I would probably go out and buy a small CNC router/carver to make the drawer fronts and then charge an extra $1000 for those carved features. As you can see, once you start charging what you're worth, your client base will start strinking dramatically.
