Quick poll on pricing

Moderators: Jason Susnjara, Larry Epplin, Clint Buechlein, Scott G Vaal

Price too high or too low

Poll ended at Sun, Sep 17 2006, 1:23PM

Price too high?
0
No votes
Price too low?
6
75%
See comments below
2
25%
 
Total votes: 8

Brian Shannon
eCabinets Beta Tester
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Joined: Thu, May 19 2005, 10:50PM
Location: Los Alamos, CA

Post by Brian Shannon »

Brian,

I just finished a big Lyptus job. Shaker \"F\"panel from Cal Door. Very nice, hard wood. Lots of tiny splinters but sands nice and smooth. Be sure and tell your customer that the color can vary! The door co had me fax back a waiver. My lumber came in straight 16' lengths, as wide as 8\"+. I don't know why the ply is so much but it is....



Brian
Kerry Fullington
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Company Name: Double E Cabinets
Country: UNITED STATES
Location: Amarillo, TX

Post by Kerry Fullington »

Brian,
I ran the job through eCabinets and my spreadsheet and came up with $12,842.00 finished delivered and installed
I have never used lyptus and because it was late I just pulled prices off the Internet for the ply. I used $135 a sheet for the 3/4 and $75 a sheet for the 1/4\". I used $65 a sheet for your interior 3/4 plywood. I used $6.00 a bd. ft. for the lumber.
I used soft maple dovetailed drawers with the tandem slides
The 7 roll-out shelves have scoop hand pulls and use accuride 3832 slides
I put in 6 carved corbels at $125 a piece
I put in an import blind corner wire pull-out unit in the blind corner for $175.
For comparison on areas, a house with 2058 ft of living, 630 for garage, with 862 for patios and porches making 3550 under roof just sold for $265,000.00 on a one acre lot with well and septic just outside of town. (This was the house I mentioned above that I bid 12,000 for cabinets for the kitchen laundry and two baths. I didn't get the job, too high)
I did get the privilege of designing the kitchen for the other bidders.
I hope this gives you some help but I am afraid that you will get pricing that is all over the board just like the Cabinet Maker Magazine poll.
Kerry
Brian Bauer
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Post by Brian Bauer »

Thanks Kerry,

I just faxed off the estimate this morning apperantly there are some people in this world that don't have microsoft word, they could not view their estimate. We shall see how the sticker shock goes :shock:
The story unfolds.

Brian Bauer
Wood is wood , Particle Board is just dust !
DanEpps
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Company Name: Dan Epps
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Post by DanEpps »

Brian

For those clients you can provide them with a free Word viewer from Microsoft. Download it here Word Viewer
DanEpps
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Post by DanEpps »

You will notice at the bottom of that page are links for Excel and PowerPoint viewers as well.

Microsoft provides these viewers so you can send documents to people who do not have Word, Excel or PowerPoint installed so they can view the documents. I'm sure they also hope that by seeing the quality of the documents you produced that your customer will be enticed to purchase a copy of Office :wink:
Brian Bauer
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Post by Brian Bauer »

Hey Dan ,
Thanks for the link it worked like a charm, Where would e cabinets be without all of the tekkies. Lost in the sawdust i believe. Or not on the computer at all. :wink:

Thanks Brian
Wood is wood , Particle Board is just dust !
Rolf Bergstrom
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Post by Rolf Bergstrom »

I have another suggestion that might work for you. Rather than ask your customer to install something on their machine to view your proposal, try saving your proposal in a different format for them. Could be they only use their computer for web browsing and e-mail and don't have (or need/want) Microsoft products on their computer and/or could have Mac or Linux based computer.
Anyway, you could save it as an HTML file and they could view it in their browser or e-mail. Or, most people have already downloaded a PDF viewer at one time or another if they are an Internet user so you could download a PDF writer which is essentially a printer driver that allows you to \"print\" a PDF file from virtually any application that has a print function. I use one called CutePDF which is a freeware (completely free fully working program) available from many shareware/freeware sites. Just do a search for cutepdf and you should find it and probably some others.
Brian Bauer
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Post by Brian Bauer »

Thanks Rolf
What Dan's suggestion did was allow me to cut and paste it onto my e-mail. That was what i was trying to do last night with no luck. Seems microsoft doesn't play well with others. It was strange because i have never had this problem before , you are probably right though must be mac users, I will find out.

Brian
Wood is wood , Particle Board is just dust !
DanEpps
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Post by DanEpps »

Excellent point Rolf. I hadn't thought about the possibility that the customer could be a Mac or Linux user or someone that just doesn't want Word on their computer.

There are several good, free PDF writers available that setup as a printer. You simply print your document to the PDF writer. I tried several and settled on PrimoPDF.
Mike Bowers
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Re:

Post by Mike Bowers »

Brian Bauer wrote:Well I sent the bid off for $18232.50 finished and delivered. seems high but maybe i've been too low for a while. will wait and see, Are e cab drawings strong enough to sell the tough customers? We'll see. These cabs do have all the bells and whistles in them they are a little plain on the outside though.

On another note why is lyptus hardwood so cheap and the plywood soo expensive?
and the door companies why do they vary so much on their prices? one company $20 sq ft another $14.
hmmmm.

Thanks to all who replied could still use more input though.

Brian Bauer
Could have something to do with the companies location & availability of hardwood in there area.
We love what we do, we do it well.
Brian Bauer
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Post by Brian Bauer »

Mike
they are right next to each other practically, geographicaly speaking, one claims it is a lot harder to work with.

Brian
Wood is wood , Particle Board is just dust !
Mike Bowers
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Re:

Post by Mike Bowers »

Brian Bauer wrote:Mike
they are right next to each other practically, geographicaly speaking, one claims it is a lot harder to work with.

Brian
If Lyptus is hard to mill for one then you would think it would be hard for both. Maybe one company has better tooling.
We love what we do, we do it well.
Brian Bauer
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Post by Brian Bauer »

Update: Got tired of waiting for a reply so I sent off an E-mail,Been a week now.
They send one back a little later saying funny you sent this, we will be making some decisions today and we will get back to you this week.

On another note i have seen the worst cabinet job of my life today. The house is beautiful, but apperantly the builder used up all the money sooo... She has a nice set of low grade big box cabs that were oak and then painted white :shock: it gets better the island is like 2 feet out from the refer. small crackerbox kitchen in a huge farmhose. the counters, drumroll please :joker: ........... are 3/4\" melamine with iron on edge banding. The seams are already buckling. Poor lady she wants new cabs but has to take care of the mold problem under the house first. 1,200 sq ft downstairs and only seven vents and negative grade ,slopes towards the house.
Don't know weather to run away from her or pray for her.
Brian
Wood is wood , Particle Board is just dust !
DanEpps
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Post by DanEpps »

At last!!! It looks like some of the \"better builders\" from around here have moved westward :joker:
Brian Bauer
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Post by Brian Bauer »

Well,
The jury is in they went with the first guy, no knowledge of him beforehand. $6,000.00 less but they told him different options a lot less fancy. What a waste of good design work :cry: .

From now on no budget up front buh bye. happy hour could have been extended :lol: .

$15.00 a l/f for design three views isometric, and elevations for the guy who is actually going to do the job.

Any of you guys get a deposit up front for design work? any other ideas for estimating?

Sorry for the rant but.....
Thanks to all who replied

Brian Bauer
Wood is wood , Particle Board is just dust !
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