Quoted 4,800 for a steel garden gate. Then I counted the hours.
I don't do a lot of gates. Forge work, small stuff, brackets and railings. But a neighbor down the road wanted a gate for the side of his house and asked what I'd charge. I said 4,800 and thought that was fair money.
Steel was 900. That's the cut sheet, tube and flat bar, one delivery. Then I stood in the shop for six days. Cutting, fitting, tacking, squaring, correcting the square because the frame pulled, welding it out, grinding, wire brushing, two coats of primer and a topcoat, letting it cure, then hauling it over in the truck and hanging it with two of us because it's a heavy bastard and the posts weren't plumb to begin with.
Six days at the bench plus a day of finishing and a half day hanging, and I was in it about 2,600 in materials and consumables. So call it 2,200 for eight days of my life before anybody takes a bite. That's under 300 a day for work that will still be standing when I'm not.
I knew the number was soft when I said it out loud. I said it anyway because he's a neighbor and because I'm still figuring out what to charge for the things I don't do often. The work I do every week I can price in my sleep. The work I do twice a year, I guess, and I guess low.
It's hung. It's straight. He's happy. I learned what a gate costs me, and it's not 4,800.
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The six days is the whole thing, no? People see a gate and think they're buying the gate. They're actually buying six days of you standing in a cold shop fighting a frame that won't stay square, and that part has no line item anywhere.
I did architecture before painting, and the same thing happened to me on drawings. Client sees a sheet of paper, not the eleven revisions under it. So I started quoting the hours and people would go quiet, like I'd insulted them personally.
4,800 for six days plus 900 of steel is close to nothing once you count the grinding. I hope you told him the number out loud, and not just in your head.
The eleven revisions under the one sheet of paper is exactly it. I'm a printmaker, and I've had lads look at a linocut on the table and go "sure that's only a stamp, isn't it" while I'm three weeks deep in the block and on my fourth proof. The redrawing, the carving, the misprint that registers wrong so you carve the whole bloody thing again. None of that has a line on it anywhere. The finished object is the only part anyone can see and the only part anyone wants to pay for.
The go-quiet thing is the worst of it though. Nothing like naming your hours to make a fella feel like he's just insulted someone's mother. Fair play to you for sticking with it anyway.
Same argument, different material, exactly. A lino block is a cut sheet that bites back. The place you carve to fix a bad register is the same place I cut and re-weld to pull a frame back to square, and both of those hours are invisible on the invoice.
The go-quiet thing, yeah. I've had it. Give a man a number and he's fine. Explain the number and you've insulted him, like you're charging him for your own slowness. Thing is I'm not slow, I'm just not fast at a thing that can't be rushed. If I could do it in two days I'd charge him two days and we'd both be happier.
The eleven revisions line is right. And yeah, I told him the number up front, but I told him the number, not the hours. If I'd said six days he'd have heard a day rate and started doing math on my life.
The correcting the square is the part nobody budgets for. Steel moves when you weld it. You can clamp and brace and still chase a half inch for an afternoon. That's not a mistake, that's the job. Estimating sheets never have a line for it because the people writing them never stood in the cold.
Printmaker I'd bet knows it better than most fabricators. Registration is the same fight with less smoke.