to think when returning favours

[whatsmyshibboleth]

it should be judged by the amount of effort put in and not necessarily the financial worth of the job?
Someone did us some drawings for some work that we are doing on our house and it probably took a couple of hours at most but was worth about £400-500 (structural engineering).
Now they are asking me to do some work which is physically demanding and will take me about 4 full weekends to complete. I'd also need to get childcare. The finished result would be about the same value as the work they did iykwim. I'd rather pay them for the work they did to be honest, I'm trying to worm my way out of it but would that just be rude.
I also have a 12 week old and have returned to work this week so I'm knackered.

My beloved (an artist) does logos etc when asked. He would be stupid to massively undercharge for effectively rebranding a company, but if he is doing it as a favour on mates' rates, he only charges for his time.

Just tell him that this task is not a fair trade and suggest a middle ground, like that you do it for him at half price. You are not obligated to return the favour without negotiating. Assert yourself an get haggling!

Absolutely! Be upfront.

I think you should just pay them for the work. And don't get involved much with them in future. Just say there is absolutely no way you would be able to do the work they want you to do. I can see both sides though. You have saved yourself by your own admission £400-£500.

I don't think its unreasonable to expect you to return the favour if its essentially the same value. Assuming the value for time is the same he should supply the materials. Its also not unreasonable to be honest with him that you'll have to do it in your spare time fitting around when your dp is free to look after the children. And that given that you have a 3 month old that might take a while because you don't want to burn yourself out. Its totally reasonable to say that you can't do a favour that involves you having to fork out for childcare imho - returning a favour doesn't mean making life really bloody difficult for yourself.

A pair of doors in exchange for drawings sounds reasonable. We paid around £500 about 7 years ago to see what size steel beam we needed for knocking out one wall. It's a bigger job than it looks.

I'm an accountant and have an electrician friend, I wanted a favour doing of about the same monetary worth as doing his tax return. We both agreed they were about the same monetary worth and swapped them. I did pay for the cable though. It took him a fair bit longer to do the electrics than it took me to do his return but we both saw it as a fair swap.

Things like accounts and technical drawings look quite minimal as an end result but take a lot longer than an average person might think as what needs to be done to come up with them is actually quite complicated.

Can't you umm/ahh about it when it's brought up, say something like 'yeah, we'll have to fix a time for that. No, can't do that date, or that one...' etc etc.

It'd be irritating not being able to tell him what a wanker he is, but at least you'll have a bit of control over it.

I think you should agree to do the job after Xmas and explain its difficult with a tiny baby.

But to be fair its not his fault you have a baby.And if its gonna be the same price it doesnt matter how long it takes.You took his time its only fair you give yours.Why is unreasonable of him to ask the favour to be returned.But not of her who thought it was one sided .

I never thought it was one sided, I just didn't think it would be such a big job. I thought he'd want one door fitted into an existing hole but it's double doors and a frame. We also repeatedly tried to pay him but he wouldn't give us a price and kept saying "it's alright, don't worry about it". I wasn't there at the time and I think it was just assumed I'd do it. I also wasn't pregnant when he did his bit so it wasn't such a problem. DP seems to think it took him about an hour to do the job and would have cost about £150. It was just for beams supporting the roof. My boss would perhaps charge £800-1000 for the doors. Not sure if these figures are accurate as I never price things up. I may say I'll do it if he gives me a hand, then he'd know the effort involved.