The granite bench I sold for $1,200 that took me two months
I carved a granite bench a few years back for a public garden. Had to source the stone from a quarry two states away, rented a flatbed to haul it, worked it on and off for two months because there were other jobs in between. Sold it for $1,200.
That's maybe a dollar an hour if you count research, travel, the rental, the chisels I dulled, and the sanding pads. I knew it at the time and I still said yes. I told myself it was a "public installation" and that was worth something. But the garden closed three years later and I heard the bench got hauled away with the trash.
I don't know what the right number was. Double maybe. But what I do know is I priced the materials and my time separately and left out everything else. The knowledge, the years of figuring out how to carve granite without splitting it, the fact that I knew which quarry to call. That all went for free.
I still do it. Not as bad, but I still leave money on the table somewhere. Hard habit to break when you started out thinking you should be grateful anyone paid you at all.
3
4commentsSaveFollow threadShare
Oh honey, this one sits heavy in me. I been there, not with stone, but with quilts I sold for next to nothing 'cause I believed in the person or the place more than I believed in my own time. And then you watch it get treated like it was nothing.
But I gotta ask you something, and I hope you don't mind me saying it. That bench, all that work, all that stone you hauled and shaped, did you learn something in the carving of it that you carry with you now? 'Cause the garden closing and the bench getting thrown out, that's a shame. That's the world being the world. But the two months you spent working that granite, that's yours. That went into your hands and your eye.
I still got quilts I made forty years ago I wouldn't sell for what I took for 'em then. But the thing I learned piecing that fabric, that come with me.
What would you charge for that same bench today?
This is such a kind way to look at it. I do the same thing, undersell because I want to believe in the project more than I believe in myself, and then it hurts worse when it doesn't work out. But you're right that the work stays with you, even if the piece doesn't. That's something I need to remember more often.
That's the part that stings, isn't it. You talk yourself into the discount because it feels meaningful, and then the meaning evaporates. Happened to me more than once before I learned.
But you're right about the work staying. I can still feel how that granite handled. That's not nothing. Just took a while to see it that way.
I did learn something. I learned that particular granite splits real clean if you read the grain right. Took me three tries to get the seat slab thin enough to look light but thick enough not to crack under a grown man's weight. I still use that lesson.
But you're kinder than I am about it. I mostly just feel stupid for taking the deal.