When You Bid Per Square Foot, Floor Area?

When some builders ask for bids in square footage, I charge for living square footage.

Do some of you charge for living and garage square footage?


This is obviously for the interior only.

OMG - Administrator, please remove the 'search' button, evidently nobody - as evidenced in this thread will ever use anymore.

robertpaint - if you bid per floor area, you are one hurtin' dude. Unless of course you are painting the floors with porch&floor paint - then that makes sense.

I only give a bid for the floor footage after seeing the plans for the homes. Basically, track houses since they are all basically have the same specs.

"Every time I order paint for these 1200 sqft houses I have been painting I allways have to run and get 3x more!What's up with that?"

in edmonton ab an eight foot by four foot board is thirty-two feet multiplied by $.26 and you get $8.32! 12 foot by 4 foot = 48 feet x $.26= $12.48 the square footage is simply the length multiplied by the width multipied by the rate you and your employer agree on. here its anywhere from .20 to .40 per board foot depending on difficulty, location, quality of the work, and various other factors.

If they want you to bid by the floor sq. ft. and the ceilings are 8 ft. I have my wall sq. ft price you just need to simply figure it out by conversion, this shouldnt be too much of a task. But as someone else said you are going to need to know how much paint its going to take for the walls unless you like running to the store all the time for extra paint & supplies.

If you know your labor rate per man hour, then actually pricing by the floor footage can be easily achieved. Let's say for example you're doing a cookie cutter, 1200 square foot home, walls = one color, builder grade flat and trim white umber semi gloss. You figure it will take 70 man hours to do the job the right way, spraying the trim and priming/finish coating walls. Take 70 X 40(our labor rate per hour)= 2800.00. Divide 1200/2800= 2.33 per square foot. Now this can obviously be adjusted for less or more man hours, if you think you can knock it out in say 55 man hours, you've just lowered the cost of the job.

I don't understand why painters have such a hard time with this idea, it's basic math. I guess the one's always asking are VERY green..

I figured this out a long time ago. I still never use it, so i have to remind myself each time i think about it... to figure out wall footage of an entire house you just need 3 pieces of information, and this only works if you are painting either an entire floor, or the whole house. If u know 1. Ceiling height 2. Number of rooms (closets count as rooms) 3. Total floor footage
Let me mention if you have 200 square feet of floor space for two rooms, consider the following to be true, whether it's two 10x10 rooms, or 1 10x15 + 1 10x5, when u add them together, u still get the original 200 square feet of floor footage, with a wall that seperates the two rooms.

Example:
(Main Floor only of a 2 story house) is 1200 sq'
Ceiling height = 8'
Number of rooms (Foyer, foyer closet, main hall, kitchen, pantry closet, powder room, living room, dining room, 1/2 of upper stairwell) = 9 rooms, or 9 areas seperated by a wall(s)

Now the formula...

a) 1200 / total areas (9) = 133.33 floor space average for each room
b) 133.33 hit the square root button on ur calculator to figure out which 2 numbers u would multiply to get this, so ur figure'n out Length or Width here, and you get 11.55 is the length of 1 wall
c) multiply 11.55 x 4 walls, to get the room perimeter = 46.2 (this number multiplied by the 9 rooms in total, gives u the total amount of baseboards as well, but whatever....)
d) 46.2 x 8' ceiling height gives u your wall space per room = 369.6 sq'
e) 369.6 sq' x 9 rooms = 3326.4 sq' of paintable wall space in this example (I don't minus out space for doors/windows, cause of the extra time for labour cutting around those items, i figure we're even)

I ask'd myself over an over again, but what if the rooms aren't all the same, isn't there something I'd be losing?, well check it out on graph paper, you'll see, it works out.

Danahy - that is one complicated formula

Why don't you just use the old drywall formula? SF X 4.5 for 8' ceiling height

If your not doing ceilings or simply doing 1 large room SF X 3.5 for 8' ceiling height (occasionally 3.0 for real large rooms or garages)

To get your coverage divide by 200 or whatever number you need for primer & each coat of paint

lol, actually it's my wording that makes it complicated, i was trying to over explain what i can do in my head. I'd be interested in learning the old drywall method, I get it, but am not sure how it includes the walls that seperate each room, in a total house... especially if all u have to go by is the square footage...

I use a simple area calculator machine thingy to figure wall area if I am unable to figure it out using my God given intuition.

The batteries are still fresh in the area calculator machine thingy.

it seems to me that some guys on this thread are talking about square footage on the floor plan in floor space, and others are talking about square footage of wall space.

I can switch my area calculator machine thingy over to floors.

Relevant in any conversation am I!

btw, I keep reading your username as VandelayandSons...

"SAY VANDELAY!!! SAY VANDELAAAAAY!!!!"
George Costanza

I know I was talking about how to figure out wall footage , if all u know is floor footage.... Either way, nobody has answer'd the original question, including myself... now were talkin bout calculators. Mine needs new Hamsters, and since it's boxing week.... brb

I figure my bid how ever I normally do it.

lets say the bid comes to 10k and the house is 2000 sf it is 5 per house sf

I charge by the size of the room (closets are not rooms imho) and what needs to be done based on a set rate I have formulated from years of painting.
Usually takes 24 hours to complete the bid, and it works for me.

lay off the area measuring machine thingy it impresses builders, GC, and homeowners alike...