fraser

Oops *wear*

Vash the Stampede

Cool, thanks.

Vash the Stampede

Materials? What materials? My mate is providing the tiles; this charge is for labour and grout only.

Wear and tear on tools is negligible; they might need to cut a few tiles for the edges, but that doesn't amount to much, and it's the only "wear" involved.

London prices sound insane; glad my mate doesn't live there! :scared:

But thanks for your input.

fraser

You forgot the adhesive.

That £40 was on the cheap side as well

Vash the Stampede

D'oh!

:scared:

All I know is that the missus had our kitchen tiled beautifully for a lot less than these guys are charging.

cresta57

You can't expect to get such a small job done on a per metre2 rate. I won't quote on a meterage rate on anything less than 15m2 as it's just not economically viable. You can't grout the same day you tile as the adhesive takes 24hs to cure so you'd have to factor in 1.5 days for a labour.
Seems like a reasonable quote to me as you'd probably need a couple of bags of adhesive and a bag of grout so there's £50 in materials. If just one bloke did the job and charged £20 per hour it comes out at £250 plus £50 for materials.
Not much of a wage when you have a van to run, fuel to buy, public liability insurance, trades guild, accountant's fees, tools & clothing and all the other hidden costs to running a legitimate small business . No wonder there's such a shortage of skilled blokes when people constantly moan about the small cost of laying a few tiles
Mrs Jones down the road got the bloke next door to do hers and he only charged her £200, he couldn't do it Wednesday though cos he has to go and "sign on" or he won't get his giro

Wife Beater

Amen to that!

CDT

Vash, it may be worth trying the "Talk" forum on the screwfix site (cue the jokes! )

http://www.screwfix.com


There seem to be a few helpful tilers on there in the "other trades talk" section.

Vash the Stampede

Fair play to you, but at the end of the day I think it all depends on the size of your business. I've known tradies who will take on jobs smaller than that, and still make a profit.

This is true, but it's still not 1.5 days of labour; most of that is curing time.

Fair enough; I'll advise my mate accordingly. Thanks.

And now I'm going to quibble with you on a few points...

£250 @ £20 per hour = 12 hours' work. But a job that small does not require 12 hours' work (though the amount of time taken to complete the job might come to 12 hours once curing time is factored in.)

So the tiler shouldn't expect to be paid for 1.5 days' work; he should only expect to be paid for the amount of time he was actually doing something.

I wouldn't pay a painter for watching his paint dry; by the same token, I wouldn't pay a tiler for waiting while his adhesive dries.

£300 per day is £1500 per week, £6000 per month and £36,000 per annum. And let's put it into perspective for the ex-pats: £36,000 per annum is $89,045 per annum Down Under - almost double the average Australian wage.

I'd call that a very reasonable wage; plenty of people get paid even less for professional middle management positions.

Yes, a tradie has plenty of overheads; but he also has plenty of deductions. Materials are purchased at discounted prices and sold at a profit to the punter. Fuel, vehicles, tools and clothing are tax deductible. Clothes are cheap, too; not exactly a killer overhead.

Accountant's fees are tax deductible, and not even necessary if (a) the tradie can do his own bookkeeping, or (b) his missus can do it for him (as one of my mates' did back home; she had taken an H & R Block tax accounting course.)

So yeah, I agree that the costs mount up, but a good tradie who runs his business properly won't need to worry about them because he'll be doing alright anyway.

And I speak as someone with many tradie mates back home in Australia - one of whom has a brand new holiday home in Cervantes, and a brand new family home in the Midland foothills. My point? There are plenty of rich tradies around; and they're not exactly a dying breed.

Bottom line: the customer gets what he pays for (whether good or bad) and the tradie gets what he works for (ditto.)

I think people are perfectly entitled to moan if they can never find a tradie who's prepared to do a small job even if it doesn't make him a killing. So he might only break even on the small job; so what? It's hardly the end of the world, and there will always be plenty of bigger jobs out there to make up for it. But for the poor geezer with a leaky bathroom and dodgy pipes, it's one hell of a hassle.

People appreciate good service from honest tradesmen who enjoy their work. They're not so keen on people who are motivated purely by profit.

Don't get me wrong, though; I agree that "cheaper" doesn't equate to "better." There are plenty of cut-price cowboys out there, as demonstrated by shows like House of Horrors and Rogue Traders (though some of them overcharge like it's going out of fashion, too!)

But speaking for myself, I always prefer a profesional tradie with a good reputation and a "no job too small" attitude who's prepared to go the extra mile - even if the job only just scrapes up to his base-line profit margin. I like a bloke who's not just in it for the money.

And I'll bet the tiles lifted after less than a week. More fool Mrs Jones.

The guy who did our kitchen was a local tradesman, and bloody good at his job. We'd definitely use him again.

Vash the Stampede

Beauty mate, thanks for the suggestion.

Cresta seems to know his stuff inside out and backwards, so I'm more than happy with his assurance that this is a reasonable quote. But for future reference, I'll check out that site.

Vash the Stampede

My father was a Dylan fan; that song is simply hilarious.

I still prefer Talkin' World War III Blues, though.

toplad

£300 per day is £1500 per week, £6000 per month and £36,000 per annum. , and bloody good at his job. We'd definitely use him again. [/QUOTE]

I WANT THAT JOB £36000 per annum for only 6 months work

cresta57

I take on jobs like that all of the time Vash I just price them accordingly, I'm running a legitimate small business and have to cover overheads that the black economy blokes don't incur.
Give me an idea of how long you think it would take to do a proper job that you can guarantee for a minimum of 6 yrs?
My costing based on 12 hrs was :
Day 1
1 hr travel [as soon as the key turns in the Ute it's costing me money in fuel]
1 hr for the initial site visit measure and quote preparation
1 hr to move any furniture and take up any carpet[You'd be surprised at how long it can take to remove an old piece of lino or carpet that's stuck to the floor]
1/2 hr to prime the floor with stabiliser or skimcoat with fine finish or levelling compound
1 hr to set out to minimise cuts or small pieces [setting out small jobs sometimes takes as long as laying the tiles]
4 hrs to tile both floors
Day 2
1 hr travel
2 hrs grouting
1/2 hr to polish tiles and silicon seal perimeters.

Out of interest how long had you actually factored in as a rough guestimate?

No it's not his wage your confusing a wage with an annual turnover. It's also unfair and inaccurate to compare a wage there to a wage here in Australia. Oh and your math is incorrect
Remember 17.5% of that £300 is headed straight to Uncle Tony as V.A.T The tax you have to pay but don't get paid for collecting
A small discount on the price of materials helps a legitimate business to remain competitive.
Sure fuel and everything else is deductible but you still have to have earned it and paid it out before it can be deducted, pretty silly to not factor in a % of your annual overheads into each job. Also how much do you add to the bill to cover the Wife's wage as a book keeper?
Clothes cheap! @ £70 quid for a pair of Snickers trousers with padded knees that's a dam site more than a pair of Levis
I don't know about you Vash but I work to pay the bills and put food on the table that means money I sell the skills I have just as we all do. I'm not registered as a charity and my skills have a price the same as anyone else's.
I admit I enjoy what I do and I enjoy the site banter as well as the meeting of different private customers but at the end of the day if I had a choice I'd be sitting in my boat enjoying a cold beer and catching a few fish.

Vash as a comparison on average there are between 2 & 3 m2 of tiles in a kitchen along with say 6 power points to cut around. If your man charged you a meterage he'd make £60 quid for what would likely take him at least a good 6 hrs to complete. I ask as we charge a base rate of $250 to tile a kitchen regardless of how many metres there are in it. People nowadays want glass inserts dotting around or fancy border tiles so a couple of metres of tiling can take nearly a full day by the time you've messed around. How much did he charge you?

PS Forgot to add you can always ask your local Federation of Master Builders for a list of reputable companies.

cresta's conscience

More like 8 hrs work for me and 4 for you dear .
Oh and you forgot about all the time you'd have to spend talking with the customer about fishing or scuba diving while I'm doing all the work
Polly won't let you ban me either

andicee

Couldn't agree more with EVERYTHING you've said old bean. It's surprising how some customers have an idea of what they think the job is worth and how much they're prepared to pay. When you spell it out for them tho, usually they can see all the bits and pieces they haven't taken into account.

I am forever telling my company I am not a registered charity. Although I work as direct labour for British Gas (as an electrician) every job is worth a certain number of pre-determined hours. If we don't agree on these hours I don't do the job. For example; they offer me 3.2 hours to change a fuseboard. Now while I can have the job done in that time the testing of every circuit once the consumer unit has been fitted can take as long again. This doesn't even allow for all the associated problems that can be encountered. Therefore I don't fit fuseboards for British Gas. My private price is £400!

Andy