Home Improvement

I am a self employed technology consultant. I have never billed $400/hour for onsite time, even considering all the overhead. Since this was my first go, I think I could do the work again in 30 minutes, so $1500/hour onsite time? I have no idea how they thought it should cost that much.

The posts were set, the top rail was on. All the hardware was installed. It was 47ft of fabric, 2 tension bars, and ties. One company wasnt even going to dig 10 feet 3 inches down in DIRT so that the fence sat even on the top rail. Literally took me 10 minutes with a pulaski for that part

This is what I refer to all the time( and get shit for ). I KNOW people around where I live that would rather sit around all week to do one job like this instead of fair pricing for work and staying busy.
As for expenses by business cost is around $500 a month for insurances, liability, license and gas, but I do use home as office since it would run a additional $3000 a month for a receptionist, building lease and utilities which I don't need for a 3 person operation. I sub out anything I don't have time/specialty for.

If I have workers on site for a job I need $80 a hour to make decent money, if not I need less than that. I fully understand some places have that high overhead. Multiple semi new van/trucks, a office expense. Even those still don't need over $200 a hour to make great money and keep a business very alive. They just need work always lined up and a consistent workload.

Last week some dude left fliers in my neighborhood on every mailbox. It said yard work, mowing $80 a acre, trimming, leaf raking and a bunch of other crap for $60 a hour. Really? A city license here is $100 a year, liability for that is $37 a month. I saw a guy down the street use him yesterday, old pickup with a push mower in back. The dude had about $800 invested including the truck and was wanting $60-80 a hour for work. I guess power to him if he can find and keep enough people happy but in a world now where degrees only gets you $25 a hour in this new economy, it is all out of whack.

Considering how quick/easy it was, how cheap the tools were, and how I was able to learn how to do it in 5 minutes on youtube (and it looks better than any fence in town), I wouldn't pay someone more than $50-75.

And I have 0 problems paying a good plumber and apprentice $100-150/hour because shit man (pun intended)

Ya you wouldn't have ever found that. Probably $150-200 but $750 is stupid.
You got to factor in 3 trips to your place in the end, trip to the material store, paperwork done at home after, It would have taken 4 hours of someone's time in the end of it all even if he was only there a hour to do the work.

Or maybe they gave you a stupid high price because they didn't want to screw with a tiny 30 minute job, that's definitely a possibility too.

joeboo_sl said:

Or maybe they gave you a stupid high price because they didn't want to screw with a tiny 30 minute job, that's definitely a possibility too.

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That could be. I didn't press for specifics but to me it was sounding like everyone was thinking half a day for 2 guys. Oh well it's done. Now I can build a deck with all the money I saved.

mkopec_sl said:

It takes some skills though. If you have no one to learn from, you can make some really huge fuck ups. And a lot of the trades such as finish carpentry, electrical, HVAC and all that do take some skills and knowledge. For example a good finish carpenter can do some great looking work in 1/4 of the time it would take a noob, and the noobs work would look like a noobs work.

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Agreed. I still remember my first tile job, my first drywall job, my first trim job with crown( and the 100' of it I wasted ) long ago. I was always a good natural framer/roofer and always a exceptional FAST painter. Some of the things it took me years of doing before I became really good to the point of trimming 4 pc crowns or hardwood stairs with banisters and curves but it always comes back to the willingness to learn, do and crazy as it sounds, investing in proper tools for those jobs.

Looks like I've finally convinced the wife to do a patio but it has to be a paverstone patio. Not really a bad thing and cheaper then a deck anyway in my case provided we save the $3,000 in labor by doing it ourselves. Still looks like we have stone shopping to do this weekend.

And crushed gravel and fine sand.

Yep. paver base, gravel, paver sand and vibratory plate compactor. Hardest thing we have to do right now is settle on a design and pick the stones.

Our house came fitted with RJ11.

It also didn't have cable at all.. so..

I plan to be in this house for a long time, and, as I renovated it, I removed all coax and traditional phone cable. I ran conduit so that if I do have to sell, and someone demands either, I can install it without any trouble. Our internet enters our house 2 feet from where it gets to the house, and everything is wireless beyond that point. I have literally 2 feet of cable that is mine - everything else is the responsibility of the internet provider.

I don't have a home phone, but even if I did, they make them so that even they don't have to be hard wired except at one point. Get a cordless phone that has a base, put it beside your internet router, and put the satellite phone bases that work wirelessly around the house. No need for wiring.

Same with cable television - that's going wireless, too. Just orient the point where it enters the house well, and all will be good.

I ripped all my old cat3 out. The wiring was a joke anyways and I'd be surprised if it worked

You can use cat5 for phone runs though, they just won't be daisy chained together. I wouldn't worry about it. Nobody is going to check that before buying and I've never seen it on an inspection report.

Deathwing_sl said:

Does anyone with a home phone use RJ11 jacks anymore? House I bought last year was wired quite lazily for traditional home phone. As I was running Cat5e, the phone wiring was getting in the way. I was getting quite frustrated, so snip snip, removed some of that shit. Now, thinking back, I'm worried about resale value. Does anyone actually use that type of jack and wiring anymore?

Note, I've basically never had a VOIP home phone, so no idea what they use either.

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You generally set up VOIP one of two ways
1) Plug 1 phone directly into the VOIP box(and it just needs a Cat-5 cable from your router/modem)
2) Plug VOIP box directly into a RJ11 phone jack, which then sends the signal to all jacks in the house on that same line, for use with multiple phones in multiple rooms.

I honestly don't think a lack of phone jacks will be a deal-breaker for many people, and probably not for anyone at all in another 5-10 years.

mkopec_sl said:

I just opened up my walls in my living room, removing all the paneling, and every fucking wall had those strands of phone wires in them, but they didnt even use them. EVERY wall had them. They were just tied off inside the wall. In fact the living room had a phone line in it, but it came from the basement through a hole in the floor, lol.

But we still use a land line. I tried getting rid of it, but my wife had no part of it. She still likes her land line to talk to people for hours on. So its either she talks to them for hours or me. So I chose to keep the phone.

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Have you pointed out that with a headset she can talk to people for hours and do things...?