A new slant on the "how long it will take thread" - someone is coming round the flat tonight to quote me for fitting the laminate - there are 4 rooms, nice and square totalling about 55m2. (I would like to do it myself but timescales are tight with moving and I have to work!). What would be a reasonable price for this - bearing in mind he's a good mate's house mate, is a professional carpenter but would be doing it in his 'spare time' ??
I'd guess 2 days @ 150 per day plus materials?
Christian.
150GBP a day - that much ?? Is that 'commercial' or with 'mates' rates' ?? Although I suppose the tiler is asking for £100 a day and plumbers.. well.. !!
I hadn't realised there was much of a difference. My guess is based on home counties rates.
Christian.
"Christian McArdle" wrote in news:3f7aafe4$0$8765$ snipped-for-privacy@reading.news.pipex.net:
On another note, I'm thinking of putting some waterproof laminate flooring in the bathroom. Is there an easy way to work out how to cut the shape for round the sink/toilet pedastel. Someone mentioned to me that their is a tool to help with this (I imagine some kind of device which moulds to the shape of the pedastal), or am i being led astray with a "buy stripey paint" suggestion ?
"Is there an easy way to work out how to cut the shape for round the sink/toilet pedastel." [..]
my favoured method is to lift the toilet, lay the laminate and replace toilet
Les
in my experience, there is no such thing as mates rates, I no longer do work for mates. Every time I have, they have ended up taking the pee and they are no longer mates......... I fitted a front door for a mate as a special favour over a New Year weekend, an emergency job. Being a bit tight he decided that a slightly seconds door that had been marked down, would be fine, it had a crack in one of the panels. we bought it on New Years Eve and I fitted it on New Years Day, he asked me if I could do anything about the crack and I said I could fill it, but it would likely come back again, he seemed ok with that. A Year later he decided to rent the flat and called me, rather upset, to complain that the crack had re appeared and insisted I do something about it free of charge. Cheeky git!
fair point - but £150 a day still seems quite high. I do what I would consider a well paid technical consultancy job and I'm not on nearly that much - time to change jobs I think !
Go right under the toilet, if at all possible.
Christian.
I've just paid a skilled plasterer £100 per (not mates rates just cash in hand). I can't see you getting a craftsman for less than that.
I've also just laid laminate 7.0m2 in about 5 hours (most of that was cutting round the a fitted cupboard and fitting around the door frame. I also had to rip opposite walls to avoid a 1" plant down one wall. It is not the m2 that takes the time but the fiddly bits around the doors, pipes cupboards etc.
AndyP (NW Kent)
-- "Wisest are they that know they do not know." Socrates
Well - if anyone watched Property Ladder last night, they'll see that its OK to pay someone £750 to do all the heavy work (as opposed to the easy painting type work she did) for 14 weeks work. The person was a neighbour who wanted to see the run down house sold - but other than that had no financial gain through its sale. She made something like £20k or so but that was only after getting her old granny to run up curtains and the slave labour of the neighbour! It really seemed as if she was getting a lot of labour for dirty cheap prices (or none).
D100 pounds a day for an 8 hour day is about 12 pounds an hour. You try getting a tradesman for that sort of rate! Many tradespeople I am aware of charge at least twice that much.
PoP
Consultancy rates within the IT industry have changed in the recent past. Previously even an average IT guy could hire himself out at 300 quid a day. Today they are lucky to get 200 quid a day.
Some are still in the 700 quid a day bracket though.
PoP
As the others have said, go under if at all possible. Don't forget to oversize the holes for the screws quite dramatically - it's part of your expansion problem prevention strategy.
However, if this isnt possible (and it wasn't with mine) then then best tool for assisting consists of stiff card and sharp knife/scissors. Scribe a template to the base of the bowl and then use this to transfer the shape onto your laminate. Leave the expansion gap around the base of the bowl as per instructions, and fill the gap with a coloured sealant. Looks fine.
I did this and arranged the laying so that the join between two runs of laminate hit the bowl at it's foremost point, ie the front. This is assuming that you're laying in that direction - if not, the don't forget to plan the runs so that you don't end up with an impossible shape to fit!
Also, don't forget that you need a laminate that's explicitly rated for bathroom use. Not that many are.
cheers Richard
-- Richard Sampson
email me at richard at olifant d-ot co do-t uk
on a similar note to this, I will have to negotiate storage heaters when I (or the tradesman) fit the laminate. Is standard (in this case quickstep
800) laminate strong enough to withstand the weight, or will I need to laminate round the feet and fill / cover the gap as appropriate ?
Put the laminate under toilet or basin pedestal. Cutting around such obstacles looks crummy, encourages dirt and is the sure sign of an amateur. As is tiling around kitchen power sockets..
plumbers.. well..
I am a consultant - I charge £800 a day plus 50p a mile travelling expenses. I have a colleague (who has been a consultant much longer than me so had a good client base) and he charges £1800. If someone offered me a skilled worker for £150 I'd snatch their hand off.
If you think that's a good days wage maybe you should consider changing jobs!
AK
In article , A K writes
What sort of consultant?..
Management - Occupational Psychology
Tiles at work in the kitchen done by a professional - go around the sockets and each corner is actually a snapped tile rather than a corner cut out. Tiles at home done by me, an amateur (my first tiling attempt actually) - all faceplates are on top of the tiles, all cutouts actually cutout (gas pipe for CH, I wasn't moving it) and I even managed to think ahead and get full tiles to 'fold' round the windowsill so the grout lines match. I was well chuffed with the result.
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