Ed Pawlowski wrote:

"aemeijers" wrote
The estimate came back at 22k. Is there some plausible reason for such
a sky-high quote?


I grew up in the business, and I have the skills to do the work. What
I don't have is the time, unless I take a week or two off from my day
job. I also don't have anyone available to help hoist panels into
position until they can get pinned in place. Constructive suggestions
welcomed.

Have you priced the material? Given that you say you'd have to take a
week or two off of work, I'm going to use two weeks as an estimate of
time. Of course, a helper is needed. So you have one person at $50 an
hour, the other at $30. If it is an 80 hour job that would be $6400
plus material.

I wonder if you'd do better asking for a price just for labor if you
provide the material?



Somewhere in the 6-10 grand range is what I was expecting, and could
even live with, since I think fresh and crisp siding would make the
house easier to sell in a couple of years. Last time I looked, 4x8 5/8
T1-11 was about $28 a sheet around here. That would have been last
October or so. I'm old, fat, and out of shape, is why I said two weeks,
assuming a young and strong, but inexpert, helper. I know that a good
2-3 man crew that could actually still work 8 hours in a row without
collapsing, could do it a lot quicker. (especially if they had proper
scaffolds and other staging, which I would have to rent or fabricate, to
do the gables.)

(Googles)
Local borg has .59 inch plain wood t1-11 for about $25 a panel. The
(presumably thinner) hardie-panels for about 3 bucks more per sheet. If
my memory is correct about 30 sheets (from when I walked around and
counted last year), that puts the material at $750-840, plus any needed
additional cedar trim (if the old stuff can't be reused), Z-flashing,
nails, and primer and paint. Be generous, and say 2k for material, to
allow for a layer of house wrap underneath. Even plus $6400 for labor,
that still comes in WAY lower than they quoted me.

Guess I need to forget about the guys with yellow-pages ads, and start
calling the ones from the weekly ad paper that say they are 'licensed,
bonded, and insured'. If I could find a guy I could trust to actually
finish the job, I wouldn't even care if he did one face of the house at
a time, in between his other jobs that had hard deadlines.

--
aem sends...