What is the going rate for a journeyman carpenter,( midwest) thats working for himself, not a big construction company.
I live in a 10 yr old ranch, and want the hip roof of the house extented over my deck( 16X14). To include gutters, soffit, 2 flood lights on the support posts( 6X6's).
I figured $1400 lumber and roofing, I figured $450 for sublet ( gutters and the electrician) I figured it would take 80 hrs of labor @$30.00 ,and thats
16 per hr more in my opnion than it should.
My bid so far $6800.00 I figured about $4500.00 tops.
You " Figure" 14 an hr is all they are worth.! You also figure they pay their compensation, liability, vehicle , insurance , right. And be lisenced and bonded. So why are you asking. Go hire someone if you can. You with what you dont know you will probably get a hack or pay 3x that I figure the work wont get done. AT 14 hr he is lucky to clear 7 , Wake the F up.
You should take a carpentry course and do it yourself because no one will meet your expectations. No tradesman can work for $30 an hour and exist in business.
You are forgetting the cost of insurance, benefits, truck, tools, taxes, licensing fees, many other things that are real cost that must be paid.
I'd charge about $60/hour for it. If you want my services through my company, it is $1000 a day plus expenses. Ed
So get more bids. If you find one lower, balance that against the likelihood that he can afford to warranty and insure himself against liability if he damages your house.
$6,800 sounds like a good deal. You are checking his references and requesting a certificate of insurance, right?
Your expectations of the cost of doing this type of business are unrealistic.
Welcome to the new millenium. You have been in a coma since 1965, right, Rip Van Winkle? I'd bet a bunch that your little project will take twice as long and cost about double what you think it will. Only elephants work for peanuts.
At $ 60 per hour you would be starving and on food stamps.
If I had the talent, and could do quaility carpenter work @$30/hr I would do it all day long!!!! You have to be competive if you are in business for yourself. Includeing tools, truck, insurance,bla bla bla.
Labor here in the midwest is Electricians charge $35/ hr that s on a service call to the house, Plumbers I believe the last time I read an article in the newspaper stated that they were earning $26. These are union scale.
Those extra's taxes, everybody pays..tools, truck,licensing fees,are wrote off at tax time.
There are a few dummys in this world that would pay you $60/hr.
After discussing the bid with the contractor this morning on the phone, explaining what I figured material and labor should cost, he dropped his bid $800. I told him I would get a few more bids, 15 minutes later he called and said he could do the job for $5000.00. I'll sign that contract, I still believe its a bit high, but the guy works his ass off, and does good work.
I recently retired as a journeyman carpenter. Earlier this year I was making $26.53 an hr plus bennies. My pay stub would show what my hourly rate was with insurances. Mind you this didn't include bennies such as holiday pay or what they had to pay for worker's compensation. They shown it cost them $160 something a week for insurances they paid. So tack on $4 or so an hour for bennies. They provided a company vehicle, had a shop, all the unforeseen overhead which self employed also have. They supplied tools except for the hand tools. Plus they had to make a profit to stay in business. I was told for my labor they charged $130.00 per hr.
I know many in the trades, some self employed. They tell me it costs them they must charge $60 per man hr, and this is for helpers also. This is for the self employed.
I recently had some estimates for landscaping, I wanted to know how much per hr. because I would be adding as we go. Such as additional mulch, trees & shrubs. It is interesting all four companies which quoted T&M was between $32 & $38 per man hour. These were not your landscapers with degrees for designing etc., these were your typical lawn care companies.
I believe you will get what you pay for, when it comes to a journeyman. I couldn't fathom the thought of paying for my vehicle, tools, insurances, advertising, business related expenses and try to make money on a mere $30 per hr. I don't know if it would be even possible to make any money to put in your pocket.
On Thu, 2 Sep 2004 20:03:16 -0500, "twfsa" scribbled this interesting note:
No, you're not. You are hiring a craftsman and paying him for his experience and expertise for a specific project you want completed. He is his own employee as he pays his wages out of whatever is left over after paying for all his work related expenses which include everything everyone else has said, not to mention paying into his retirement account, his medical insurance, and all the other benefits most employers pay their employees.
You may be hiring a carpenter, but that falls far short of making him your employee.
-- John Willis (Remove the Primes before e-mailing me)
I just hired two carpenters to make steps from the top of the river bank to the bottom. 42 steps..a run of about 44 ft. They charged me $29 per hour for two men...I agree they couldn't be making any money at $14.50 each per hour but they quoted the price and came well recommended. I didn't quibble as there was no way I could do the job, having fallen head first off the pier at the bottom, 8 foot into the river bank a couple of weeks before and messed up my back. I did figure they doubled the cost of the lumber but still no problem with me as they had to pick it up and haul it to the job site. And as my Teamster son said, he makes $29 per hour by himself. This was in very Northern Illinois, by the way.
When you hire a craftsman, it is different than hiring a grunt to clean your garage or dig a ditch. With the grunt, you tell him every little thing you want him to do and how you want him to do it. As he goes along his merry way, if he isn't doing it up to snuff, you cut him loose. Most of the time, you have to stand there, or they stop working.
When you hire a craftsman, you tell him the end result you want him to accomplish. You may outline some of the parameters of the work, but by and large if he is a real craftsman, he knows how to do his job, and other than color and size and style, you don't have to tell him much.
Some people have a problem because they tell a craftsman what they want, then if the craftsman does it in a short time, they crow about the "hourly" rate being too high. No mention that yesterday, the basement was flooded, excrement was backing up into the house, and the dogs wouldn't even come inside. They wail, "But it only took you four hours to snake the pipe and get the basement drained!" They forget about how bad the situation was 24 hours ago, and completely discount the years it took to learn what to do and how to do it.
You can't have it both ways. Either you hire a guy by the hour and stand and watch him work, or you hire a craftsman and turn him loose. You hold the craftsman accountable at the end, but you don't hang over him.
If I were the craftsman who was being questioned here, I would suddenly be too busy to take this job. The "employer" is going to bitch about everything from the brand of nails on down.
Sounds like you got a good deal. If you were in a higher price area I'd say you're taking a big risk but maybe in the midwest things are very cheap.
Is he buying the lumber, roofing materials, and paying the subcontractors for that amount? Is he a liscensed contractor? Is he paying for the building permit out that price? Does he carry liability insurance?
Carpentry is one of those trades where you can always find some young guy who might even be decent at what he does to take a job for not very much money. And there are plenty of homeowners that think paying someone more than the young guy to take the job means they are a sucker. But in the long run that young guy will learn its no longer worth it to do a good job and show up on time and return calls and use sharp blades and keep his brakes maintained and his insurance paid and work hard and fix mistakes that show up a few weeks after the job is finished.
More rarely you'll find extremely fast and high quality craftsmen that can do the job for a cheap price because they are so good. But that's rare because they don't need to work cheaply.
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here.
All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.