Pricing fun

[drumpriest]

The wood whisperer posted a link to a pricing web site that helps price your projects for sale. I've had fun tonight figuring out what the furniture I've built is "worth" at the national minimum shop time/hour, which was 30$ in a recent article. The average was about 50$/hour, a high of 75$, but 30$ was from a guy here in Pa, so I figure that's not a bad estimate as a start.

Here's the link.

http://www.bridgewooddesign.com/estimator/

My most expensive piece is my desk, at about 5,000$ My "best" project is probably the baby changing table, it was worth oer 1500$. I am now armed with estimates of most of the things I've built for this house, so that LOML can feel better about my tool purchases.

I've done about 15,000$ worth of furniture over the past couple of years, according to this calculator. Honestly the figures are pretty accurate when compared to say, the Stickley store.

Have fun with it.

[final_t]

Interesting, and goes into my bookmarks - but even with the About link, I'm pretty confuzzled this morning on the various things it refers to and whatnot.

Can you share some of the inputs you put in for say the desk? That might help compare and contrast with what I'm putting in there from memory.

[drumpriest]

Sure...

Step 1
1. I used "estimate and customer price proposal"
2. rough-milled lumber, plywood, hardware, finishing supplies, shop supplies (I bought a new TS blade when doing that project)
3. Estimate labour hours, design, milling, assembly, finishing.
4. I specified an hourly overhead rate (electricity, for instance, in running the shop)
5. I included an allowance (for extra stuff I bought due to screwing other stuff up)
6. nothing
7. 0% profit, priced it just on labour, but this would be used if you were paying someone else for the labour, for instance, and wanted to make a profit.
8. no shipping costs, very local customer. ;-)
9. I did tax, as I wanted to know what the buying price here would be.
10-11. nothing
12. Detailed Costs.


Ok, then I just had to fill those options out...
cost of rough lumber, plywood, hardware, and finishing supplies. I kept track of that while building it anyway. I also did a bottle of glue and that TS blade. "hardware" included slides, hinges, figure 8 fasteners, and glide tape.

Next was labour rate, which I did at 30$ an hour, as it was the lowest reported "pro" rate in the US. And on this job, I feel I did a pro level of quality. (perhaps not on some other jobs.) ;-)

Design Hours - I modelling the project in 3D before doing it, so that time went here.
Milling hours - cutting stuff up, cutting joinery, sanding, etc... this one was complicated, and took about 60 hours to complete this phase.
Assembly - I only put in here my actual assembly time, not the time the shop is useless due to clamps being used.
Finishing - again only the time spent doing it, not the time waiting for a finish to dry. I did a rub out finish on this desk though, so this time was significant.

Overhead is tricky, depends upon your area, but I did 1$ an hour, as that will easily cover electricity, and I'm not paying any business insurance or anything.

And that's it.