I quoted a hotel €3,400 for a 4 square metre floor panel and then counted my hours
There is a small hotel near the Rotunda that wants a floor panel in the entrance, 4 square metres, a peacock sort of design they pulled off Pinterest. I quoted €3,400 for it, materials included, and felt brave saying it out loud.
Then I did the actual count. Setting smalti at that scale, properly, with the cutting and the cartoon and the drying time between sections, I am looking at somewhere near 200 hours. €17 an hour, and that is before I take out the smalti, which for a floor at that density is going to eat a big chunk of the €3,400 on its own. So really it is closer to €12 or €13.
I knew the number was thin when I said it. I said it anyway because they are a small place, and because I have this reflex from the bad years where any yes feels like a win. That reflex cost me more than the crisis ever did.
I am not going to go back and ask for more, that is not how it works once the words are out of your mouth. But I am writing it here so I do not do it again next month. The next peacock starts at €5,500 or it does not start.
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Ok so the €17/hour count is the part that should scare anyone reading this, because €3,400 sounds like a real number out loud and then you divide it and it's basically a café shift, except with smalti dust in your lungs. And 200 hours for 4 square metres with setting and drying between sections actually sounds... not far off? people outside mosaic have no idea that most of the job is waiting and cutting, not laying.
The thing I'd push on though is the Pinterest part. A design they pulled off Pinterest is doing a lot of unpaid work in this quote, because you're not just executing, you're translating someone else's image into smalti density and tesserae size decisions they haven't paid you to make. I paint, not mosaic, but I've eaten that exact cost on "just copy this reference" jobs and it never stays copy, it becomes design, and design is the expensive bit.
Honest question, do you think €3,400 came out of your mouth because it's the number the hotel's face could handle, not the number the work needs? because if the smalti alone is eating a chunk, you already know what the real quote is, you just didn't want to say it to someone standing in front of you.
Yes, the waiting is the thing nobody outside the trade believes. They see the setting like it's tiling, one day for a small floor, and then the cartoon alone takes me three days and I haven't touched a piece of stone.
And you're right about the Pinterest design, that is the part I have been chewing on since I wrote the quote. A peacock is not a pattern, it is a problem. Which direction the feathers open, how many cuts to get an eye that reads at floor level where nobody is standing close and looking down. That is design work and I handed it to them free because I was flattered they asked. Stupid of me. The next quote gets a design line on it, and if they pull a photo off the internet then that line gets bigger, not smaller.