Pricing Windows

PlainPainter

Hey just wanted a reality check from you guys. I put together an estimate for this neighbor/contractor of mine - and part of estimating I did was charge $25/coat for exterior windows. He had 6 new windows put in - and trimmed them - along with the sills. I figured between filling nailholes, caulking, touching up body paint, the fact they aren't all on the first floor. That $25/coat including materials was a reasonable estimate. Am I way off base here?
Oh yeah to make things more complicated the sills are a differnt color from the 3 trim boards surrounding each window - so that's 2 extra trips with the ladders on the second floor. I just don't know about this business - it's getting tougher and tougher. Anyways, he thought it was a bit much money. And this is a guy that has done lots of work for my folks and sister, charges insane amounts of money. At one point he was going to charge 13 grand to install a boiler in my folks house - I intervened, got the family plumber who works for $85/man-hour to install the boiler and got the top of the chimney broken down to roofline and rebuilt, new chimney flashing and then entire chimney lined for about 8 grand total. Makes me wonder who is doing the ripping off!

Bob Kovacs

The "$25/window" figure means nothing to us- we don't know where you are, what your hourly costs of labor are, or what your overhead costs are. The better question would be "I figured each window would take 1 hour per coat- does this sound about right to you?", and then you could apply your hourly rate to whatever labor amount you feel comfortable with using after you've gotten some responses.

Even without knowing any of the above info, though, $25 sounds extremely low- "how low" depends on those factors I mentioned above, though.

ETA- I just saw in another post where you said that $50/hour was about the bottom end of the barrel for painters, so that means you're thinking you can set up a ladder, fill nails, caulk, paint two different colors on different parts of the window, and touch up the body in less than 30 minutes? I also didn't take out for materials, so you've actually got less time than that. Sounds awfully aggressive to me......

PlainPainter

Yeah sorry for generalizing. I priced it aggressive to get this guys business - he is a G.C. and a neigbor - these are typical sized windows - I don't how much more to describe it than that - with the typical 1x6 trimboards. I just found it disgusting that this guy told me it was more than he wanted to pay for.

PlainPainter

Bob - that was $25/coat not per window. If each window is getting a coat of primer and two coats of paint - that is pricing them at $75 each - and I was willing to caulk and fill nail holes and touch up the surrounding claboards.

donb1959

$25.00 per window is very cheap, esspecially for new windows. If all Im bidding on is windows the typical 6/6 window with light prep I charge 45.00-50.00

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painterofeveryt

please re read his post.....
Bob - that was $25/coat not per window. If each window is getting a coat of primer and two coats of paint - that is pricing them at $75 each