New plasterboard ceiling in garage - £850

somethingcorporate

Yep, I'd have thought you could too!

Good work.

mwbrown

we had a price a month or so ago for reboarding our kitchen and utility room (size is 10ft x 8ft for the kitchen and 8ft x 8ft for the utility room) and we were told it would cost £400 inc VAT (this was for either plasterboard/tongue and groove cladding or plastic cladding), this includes the removal of the old kitchen ceiling and getting rid of the rubbish.

We are north west based.

Mike

keystone

somethingcorporate wrote: »

Still, wait for all the tradesman to jump on to defend him saying he HAS to do this and otherwise will not stay in business.

Oh no you are absolutely NOT going to get away with that. If you are going to quote me (especially unattributably) then please do so in context and also accurately. You are twisting it to suit your own agenda. I did not say that for one solitary microsecond.

Oh and BTW OP - it's too expensive. Get more quotes. Your "builder" is wriggling. Kick him into touch and get another.

Cheers

evoke

^ Well, I might have had a stroke of luck today. I was on my way to the local shops to get a bite to eat when I spotted a house being refurbished a few doors away from mine.

I shouted into the doorway and a builder came down to greet me. I'd watched this house being transformed over the last three months. It was sold earlier this year in a very dilapidated condition. The new owners are not living in it yet. The refurbishment is nearly finished now and the builder walked over to my place and had a look at the job.

He muttered around £400 for everything and he'll use mineral wool insulation and drop the ceiling so that he can get a lot of insulation in the void. His price also includes skimming the ceiling afterwards. He'll give me a firm, written quote later this week.

Given that i've got first-hand knowledge of the quality of his work, I might just hire him as his current job is about to finish. He's got a variety of different tradespeople who work with him as a team so he'll be able to take care of the lights too.

keystone

Thats more like it.

Cheers

somethingcorporate

keystone wrote: »

Oh no you are absolutely NOT going to get away with that. If you are going to quote me (especially unattributably) then please do so in context and also accurately. You are twisting it to suit your own agenda. I did not say that for one solitary microsecond.

Oh and BTW OP - it's too expensive. Get more quotes. Your "builder" is wriggling. Kick him into touch and get another.

Cheers

Another thread you want to take off-topic? I'm still waiting for you to respond to my point of you disagreeing with me when I said a tradesman doesn't NEED to add on a margin to his materials.

Suggest you add me to your ignore list and get on with your life.

Edit: looks like a good price and much more like it.

keystone

somethingcorporate wrote: »

Another thread you want to take off-topic?

Oh no not at all. I'm responding to YOU and what YOU wrote on this thread. I did not say what you are, rather snidely if you don't mind me saying so, suggesting was said. It's not me taking the thread off topic by you posting that - its you IMO.

I'm still waiting for you to respond to my point of you disagreeing with me when I said a tradesman doesn't NEED to add on a margin to his materials.

Again you deliberately misunderstand (because I don't think you are that obtuse as to truly misunderstand) what I said. but let me repeat, if his business model says thats the way that its done then thats the way that its done. He has a choice to run his business that way just the same way that you have a choice not to do business with him if that is your desire. OK so in the remote possibility that I wasn't clear in my previous answer (conveniently ignored) to this very same question let me respond to your patient waiting and illustrate by example that your hypothesis is, IMO, somewhat vacuous:

Two contractors bidding for the same work. Lets call one John and one Jim. Both have equally good references. Both have allowed the client to view their work and are equally as good and both have had an equal opportunity to visit the prospective client's premises and understand his precise needs and wants.

John recovers 100% of his overheads through his labour rate. His daily rate is £ 150 and the job is expected to take 3 days. He tells the client that he should to buy the materials himself to avoid any markup against a bill of quantities/specification that he has drawn up. The market price for these materials is £ 500. So ignoring the time that the customer has to cover for fetching and carrying materials (this always gets forgotten though) he gets a quote from John for £ 450 for labour, adds the £ 500 he has to pay for materials and comes up with a total of £ 950.00

Jim, however, covers 85% of his overheads through his labour rate and 15% through material markup. Both being self employed sole traders their overheads are likely to be of a similar order but we don't need to quantify that. Just for the sake of argument lets assume his daily rate £ 120 due to his lower overhead recovery. However, due to buying power he can get the materials at 80% of market rate or £ 400. To that he adds his overhead recovery of 15% making the material total £ 470. So the total quote from Jim is £ 360+ £ 470 = £ 830.

So the easy decision for the client is to award the contract to Jim.

Ahh but the client is canny and and as part of his evaluation of the two quotes the client approaches the materials supplier and manages to blag a 5% discount. After that he still is looking at a total of £ 450 + £ 475 = £ 925 if he decides to go with John and that price remains higher than Jim's.

So as part of his negotiation process he also goes back to Jim and says I'll buy the materials and free issue to you. Jim says OK I'll do it that way BUT you will be responsible for getting the correct materials to site on schedule and you will be responsible if there is anything wrong and I'll only give you a warranty on my labour - any materials issues are down to you (which is exactly the same basis that John has quoted in the first place of course). Also I'm afraid that I'll be making a loss on the job if I do it this way so I need to increase my price to £ 430.00 (that being the total of his labour plus his displaced materials margin). So after this negotiation the price he is looking at if he were to use Jim is £ 430+ £ 475 = £905.

Oh - rats! Jim is still cheaper and I'm not happy because it doesn't fit my blinkered and dogmatic view of the world. Back to the supplier then and get the discount increased to10% after much weeping, wailing and blood on carpet but thats the limit because you are not a tradesman and don't give the supplier the volume that justifies the discount that the supplier can justify within his business model. So John's total is now £ 900 and Jim's total is now £ 880.

Kerching! The client has by now worked out after having expended an enormous amount of unecessary energy that he is always better off with Jim on this scenario. Even if he goes and buys cheaper, lower spec materials in an attempt to drive the project cost down neither Jim nor John will want to use them anyway because doing so will jeopardise the integrity of the job. By now though he's getting pig headed because of all the grief he's having (all of it self inflicted by the way) and says to Jim "well I'm only prepared to pay your originally quoted £ 360 for labour and I'll buy the materials" so Jim says "Fine. I neither want nor need your business on that basis, find somebody else - I'm off." That's the client cutting off his nose to spite his face.

Simplistic this example may be and there are obviously many possible permutations but, tell me please, who logically does the client contract with in this scenario as I have outlined it? Its a binary answer by the way.

Suggest you add me to your ignore list and get on with your life.

What? Let you off the hook so you can just run away. Not a chance, old son.

Edit: looks like a good price and much more like it.

Umm. I thought I used exactly those words in post 16 above your 17. At least that's something you do agree with me on so I'm obviously not totally beyond redemption.

Cheers

spacey2012

It is not a builders job, you need a plasterer with dry lining experience.

southcoastrgi

is this an internal garage ? I'm guessing it is due to you wanting insulation, therefore it doesn't sound like your 1st builder was quoting correctly anyway, unless his quote was for fire rated plasterboard ?

evoke

The job is going ahead next week - £300 labour + material costs. The builder will buy the materials, show me the receipt and I just give him the money for the materials.

The quote includes skimming the ceiling so is a bit of a result. The plasterboard will be fire-rated as the garage is part-integral. the insulation will be to the required depth for current building regulations.

He'll also call in an electrician as required to remove two strip lights and then fix them back again at the end of the day.

So, all in all, around £400 for the entire job is a good result for me.