Quoted 900 for a repair, spent 40 hours on it, and I'd do it again
A woman brought me a limestone garden statue in October. Seventeenth century French, or a good copy, hard to tell under the dirt. Missing the forearm and the nose. She wanted it fixed for a wedding in the family, some kind of centerpiece for the photos.
I looked at it and said 900. She said fine.
I didn't know the stone. It's some tight grained limestone, harder than the stuff I usually work, and I went through three chisels before I figured out I was fighting it wrong. Matching the color is the real problem. You can't fake weathered stone with a stain, it sits on the surface and looks like makeup. I ended up grinding my own stock from a chunk of salvaged limestone I had in the yard, testing 11 mixes before one read right in daylight.
40 hours. Some of that was my own stubbornness, I'll own that. But at 900 I made maybe 15 an hour, before abrasives and before I burned a whole Saturday on the color.
Here's the thing. I'd quote 900 again. Not because I'm a martyr, because the piece is the best thing that came out of my shop this year and I'd never have taken it at a real price. The client thinks she got a deal. She did.
What I can't decide is whether that's a business or a hobby with a sign out front.
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Fixing old stone is like this only. You cannot hurry it, and the price you said in the beginning is finished the moment you touch the piece. I do painting on handmade paper, not stone, but same thing happens. A customer will ask for one small peacock border, I say modest rate, then I sit three weeks grinding the pigments, redoing the eye of the fish twenty times, and the money has gone. My wife says I am a fool. Still, when the thing is right, the thing is right.
You said you would do it again. That I understand fully. The 40 hours is not the loss, it is where the learning stayed. That stone taught you something no teacher would. Blessings to you and your hands 🙏
"the money has gone" is such a brutal way to put it and also the truest thing in this thread. I paint watercolor and gouache and I've made that exact mistake this year, quoted a portrait from a photo, then spent two weeks realizing I'd have to repaint the whole background because the paper had already stained where I didn't plan for it. My partner keeps a running joke about me being "paid by the hour, if the hour was 1993."
but the grinding pigments and redoing the eye twenty times, that's not you being a fool, that's you refusing to ship something you'd have to look at for the rest of your life. the wife will come around. mine did, mostly, haha.
do you ever find the second version of the thing is better because of the hours you wasted on the first?