Question
I was looking back through a few recent beaded inset jobs and attempted to establish a linear foot price for quick estimating purposes. I know that linear foot pricing shouldn't be used for hard quote purposes. That said, I would like to see what everyone comes up with looking back at recent jobs.
Here is some background info:
Small 2-4 man shop in metro Atlanta
3/4" plywood with 1/4" prefinished boxes
1.75" beaded face frames
5/8" dovetail drawer boxes
Blum undermount full extension soft close
I've been adding up total base cabinets + total wall cabinets + extra linear for the 18" space for talls. On the low end I'm right around $400.00 for stain on shaker recessed panel door, slab drawer front, no matching end panels. Upwards of $600 for all the bells and whistles.
Forum Responses
(Business and Management Forum)
From contributor J:
I don't use LF pricing, but that seems pretty low to me. Certainly cheaper than I would do them for. As long as you're making money, though, I guess you could use it for rough estimates in house.
Another way to look at it is my average kitchen goes between 20-30 LF of cabinetry. At $600 per, that puts you at $12k - $18k for a kitchen… about what I'd get for a Euro kitchen. For full beaded inset I would be close to double that. And I'm somewhere in the middle of the price range in my area. There are plenty of shops that would charge double what I do.
I should also note that my kitchens include installation.
For example, the kitchen below had a total 61.75 linear feet of all cabinetry. I charged $27,352 for the cabinetry. So that comes to $442.95 per linear ft. Thoughts?
In my area, that's a 40-50k job. A whole lot of the value in a job like this is the little things, like hood ventilation, kick vents, lighting, site prep and co-ordination with other trades. Also, don't discount the insurance/liability costs.
Did you need to wait for stone counters before installing the garage? Was this job close to home? Did the customer change the design 5 times during the process? Did you need the sink before you built the sink base? Did the contractor protect the floor prior to your work or did you need to do that? This looks like a best case scenario job - plenty of space for multiple trades at one time, no appliance panels, no end panels, lots of open space around the windows, oversized crown, etc.
In the end, did you turn a profit on this job? If you had to do it again, and there were complications (delays due to permitting, weather, other trades, annoying customer, damaged sink, etc.), could you still turn a profit?
Unless Atlanta offers very low commercial rents, taxes, insurance, labor and cost of living, this strikes me as a lot of liability without enough compensation. Just my 2 cents, but in New Jersey, that's like 50 bucks.
Linear foot pricing does not lend itself at all to beaded inset face frame cabinetry. Simply adding a couple of drawers to a lower makes that unit go up in price fast. Add in a large crown, the feet, hopefully a nicer than usual pantry. $600 is not a lot of money to cover those extras.
Simply put, I couldn't do it. I thought I could for the first couple years, based on my per job reflections, but then the bookwork and banker started showing me otherwise... Since I was already doing as many hours per week as I could do, I had no choice but to go up or go out.
Just for the doubters, I've been in business 8 years with months of backlog. No, I'm not getting rich, but I'm making a decent living.
