Open Thread

morning all,
I like to continue the chat from late last night if I may.
Your thoughts please.

Here’s a cowboy story for you: My landlady paid $2,000 (labor) for her contractor to install a new kitchen, refinish the floors, and paint my apartment.

The apartment is probably 800 square feet, and the kitchen is a galley side kitchen but the work involved installing about nine linear feet of cabinets, granite tile counter and backsplash with contrast tile, and a tile floor. Painting included contrast trim.

Talk about a deal. Half the grout fell out a week later, and six months later the floors have no more polyurethane on them.

Kitchen still looks pretty good though.

Isn’t that a crazy price? Poor contractor, he must be more than half way to the poor house by now.

Posted by: mopar at April 30, 2009 10:23 PM

And she’ll probably keep our $2,000 security deposit when we move — on account of the missing polyurethane, which is entirely her fault — and make back all the money.

Posted by: mopar at April 30, 2009 10:24 PM

mopar, that sounds about right by London standards if you’re not paying a middleman although depends how much prep work involved for the painting.

remove old kitchen – 1/2 day
install new kitchen – 1 day (add 1/2 day if carcasses need building up)
tiling and prep – 1 day
painting prep, undercoat and topcoat – 4 days
Total = 1 week

The grouting problem is because he used cheap grout and not enough of it – which is stupid because even the good stuff is fairly cheap and no more difficult to use the right amount.

He’s chosen the wrong PU sealer or applied it incorrectly – again would not have cost much more to do it right.

Sounds like he was a general labourer that needed a bit of direction. Day rate of $250 x 7 = $1,750. Add in another day of contingency and you are there. Not good if you are paying taxes on it but not bad for cash in hand.

Posted by: the chicken at May 1, 2009 3:40 AM

Very interesting, chicken, about the costs and the grout.

Don’t forget the floors. Maybe a day to sand and put down the first coat, then two more days to put down more coats and dry? He was late and in a rush so he put down only one coat as far as I know, then covered the whole thing with paper before it was dry so we could move in the next day.

I’ve been quoted $2,000 just to do polyurethane, I’ve never heard of anyone installing a whole kitchen for less than $2,000 (but now that I think of it, maybe that included all the materials), and I’ve certainly met a lot of painters who would like to think they should get $2,000 to paint an 800-sf apt.

Posted by: mopar at May 1, 2009 9:16 AM

Driving to NJ is more hazardous to your health. 🙂

Bridge Over troubled Water by the Queen of Soul…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DBl5gAs6WI

today was 1st time riding subway since this Swine Flu thing. Packed & a few people coughing – actually made me want to drive to work in NJ