Construction Helper

OP, i’ll tell you some things that no homeowner who has never done this as a job can tell you. if you read this and begin to think of this the way a contractor might, you might get this job done for not much more than if you did by struggling through this on your own with a cheap helper.

do you know how much time this will take? are you experienced enough to know that? (two people can do a bathroom in something like 80 to 100 hours, me thinks. i do not do bathrooms). if you do not know those things, how can you know how much you can spend on labor or at what rate you can pay that labor? contractors have to consider this before they quote a job and labor is the biggest expense so they must get that right and be aware of it through the entire job.

what green thinker said is the absolute truth. What green thinker did not tell you is, if you find some person who is experienced in this and does it on the weekends, that person is NOT going to give up his or her weekend for 20 an hour or even 30 an hour. i know people who do this – both green card holders and undocumented – and they charge more like 600 a day. i know people who would do this for 350 a day but i bet they are slammed busy in this economy and they will soon be charging 400 a day.

there are other things to consider. do you have all the tools? you will not find someone with ALL the tools at 20 or 30 an hour. Those tools cost money and contractors always have to think forward; as they work they always building something into the budget or their hourly rate to replace a couple of those tools a year. that is why people with tools cost more. are you going to by the tools? even if you have the tools and expect someone else to use them, that will slow the job down. experienced people want to use their own tools because they know the nuances of them and know how to reach for them and turn them in one hand as they pick them up and that makes the job go faster. no wasted time fumbling with cheap or homeowner grade tools or old 14 volt drills. good working tools will shave hours off this job.

Flip the job around:
hire someone with all the tools and experience for something like 400 a day and YOU become the helper. i said it before, there is no way you two are going to work with ease in a small bathroom. so put the experienced person inside hanging the drywall, the other (you) is outside cutting and handing, etc and cleaning up and you save money by keeping that person working. you clean up your self after each day. and you demo (a helper would demo on a job like this).

if you do what i say above, you might double your hourly rate but the job might move twice as fast. that is why experience people get paid what they do .

i do not mind helping people who are honest about their situations or who have an emergency and have to do what they have to do. but if someone is trying to pay people 20 an hour because they have a hard choice between doing the bathroom and buying a new convertible sports car, i do not want to know them.