Quoted $4,500 for a welded steel gate, took six weeks, netted about $11 an hour

A client came to me two years ago wanting a welded steel gate for their property. Custom, so I quoted $4,500. I had done the material math, figured my hours at a rate I thought was fair. Then the design kept changing, which it always does. I added the scrollwork because they asked for it, went back and rebuilt the hinge mounts twice because the masonry turned out to be garbage.

Six weeks door to door. When I actually added up the hours, including the redo, it came to about $11 an hour. I could make more welding pipe for a plumber.

I don't know what the answer is. You raise the quote and clients balk, or you stay honest about hours and you're priced out. I just know I stopped quoting a flat number without writing down how long I genuinely expect it to take. That gate taught me the lesson, $11 at a time.

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Sol Reyes·2h

The scrollwork gets me. You probably threw it in because you wanted to make something beautiful and the client was into it, and that's exactly where the money leaks out. I do the same thing with my work, someone asks me to push a piece further, add more, go bigger, and I just do it because I'm already in the flow and the making feels good. Then I add up the hours and realize I gave away a week of my life for the pleasure of it.

The hinge mounts twice is the real story though. That's not your fault, that's bad masonry, and you ate it. There's no quote that protects you from garbage behind someone's wall that you only find halfway through. But the design changes, man. Those are where you've gotta plant your feet.

I don't know the answer either, but I know the trap from the inside. It's not really about the $11 an hour. It's that we want to be liked and we want the work to be good, and both of those pull against getting paid properly. Raising the quote doesn't fix it if you still absorb every change without a word.

Hope you kept a photo of the gate at least. Scrollwork that costs you $11 an hour better be something you can look at and go, yeah, I made that.

Inês Costa·1h

The hinge mounts twice hurt to read, I won't lie. I know that feeling of doing the work over because something underneath you trusted turned out to be rotten, and there's no line item in the world that covers it. You just absorb it and tell yourself the client saw you handle it well.

But I think you're onto something about the scrollwork. I do the same with my prints sometimes. Someone sees one I've done and asks for more, another layer, deeper blue, and I say yes because it's a joy to be asked and the work is already carrying me. And then I count the hours and the joy cost me money I don't really have to spare. It's a hard thing, charging for the part of it that we love. Feels like it would ruin it somehow. But it's still labor, isn't it.

Roman PetrakOP·27m

You're not wrong about the best-case hours. I quoted what I wanted it to be, not what I knew it would be. After thirty years of this I should know better.

But I'll hold my ground on the masonry. You can't bid around somebody else's corner-cutting. If their wall's soft, that's not a design revision, that's a defect in what I'm hanging off. I didn't get to choose where those hinges went. I just got to eat the redo.

The scrollwork I'll own. That one's mine.

Roman PetrakOP·1h

You're not wrong about the best-case hours. I quoted what I wanted it to be, not what I knew it would be. After thirty years of this I should know better.

But I'll hold my ground on the masonry. You can't quote around someone else's bad work. You find it when you're halfway in and the anchors won't hold, and the choice is eat it or hand the client a bill for something they think is my problem. I ate it because the gate had to be right. That's not a business decision, that's just pride.

The $11 an hour stings less than knowing the hinge mounts took me a week and the wall was never going to be any better than it was.

Lukas Brandt·2h

The $11 an hour isn't really the mistake, is it? The mistake is that you quoted against your best-case hours and then absorbed every change for free. The design revisions, the hinge mounts twice because the masonry was bad, that's all work the client should be paying for. Not necessarily as a line item, but the base quote has to carry the risk that the job won't go smoothly, because in this line of work it rarely does.

I know the position. I paint large canvases, and for years I priced them against the materials and the hours and never the risk, never the years it took to get fast enough that the hours looked reasonable. When you're good, the hours go down and the price should go up, not down, because the client is buying the speed too. But it took me a long time to believe that.

Raise the quote. And put the scope of changes in writing from the start, so "can you just..." has a number attached to it. The plumber comparison is fair but it's also a trap, because you'll talk yourself out of charging what the work is actually worth. The gate is custom, it took a skilled hand, it's not pipe welding. Price it like that and hold the line.

Roman PetrakOP·2h

You're right that best-case hours are a trap. I knew it too, I just booked the job anyway because the work was good and the client seemed reasonable. That's on me.

But I'll push back on one thing. The masonry being bad, that's not the client's fault. That's the builder who poured it before I ever got there. I can bake some risk into a quote for changes, sure, but I can't charge a client for a wall that was poured wrong by someone else. That's the hazard of working on top of other people's work.

The changes, yeah, those were on them. The hinge redo, that was just the job. Hard to tell where one ends and the other begins when you're in the middle of it.

The years-to-get-fast point you're making, I hear it. But nobody pays me for my thirty years. They pay me for a gate that hangs straight in ten years. That's the whole transaction, and I'm the one who has to keep both sides of it honest.