Shocked at the cost of tradesman

[Nooooooou]

3 bedroom, average size.

Costs are for labor only... no materials

install laminate wood flooring across house £1.5k to £2.5k (3 quotes were above £2k).
strip wallpaper, skim and paint walls -£3k to £5k.

based in south east..
I think this is really excessive. I think it works out to more than £400 per day.

I've always found the "proper" firms don't mess you around and always send a quote as they have admin and other staff. But you have to pay for that, so their costs are higher.

It's the "one ban bands" who are generally disorganised, but people choose them because they tend to be cheaper! They're cheaper because they don't have admin staff to pay!

Horses for courses.

I've had it from proper firms as well. We needed a new path laid and several firms didn't bother getting back to us. I now tell people to avoid them if they want decent customer service. I'm currently waiting for a quote for some bathroom work, again nothing. How long does it take to say sorry, we can't do it?

DH was a handyman and was a one man band, he always went back to people whether he wanted/could do the job or not.

Sorry, that turned into a rant but I can't bear poor customer service!

So your issue with Brexit is that you lost access to cheap imported skills undercutting the local market (which contributed to local market not training up juniors, who could otherwise now be plastering your house)?

I’ve had tradies from all over, I’ve never found British tradies “worse” or “better” than their compatriots from overseas. All have good, bad and indifferent and the solution is usually get recommendations, try them out and if they are good - hang on to them. However there is no getting away from the fact that an influx of cheap labour undercutting the local market contributed to the current shortage.

There needs to be a drive to get more young people into trades and less snobbery.
I am just as proud that 2 DCs are in trade instead of further education. They will probably end up earning more money anyway!
The years of learning these skills, and the hard physical graft they entail is why the prices are so high.
DCs college said that at the moment there is a shortage of young people wanting to go into plumbing, so in a few years time, people will be shocked at how expensive this work is, because there are so few people in this trade.

I'm in Berkshire and those prices strike me as very reasonable.

You'd pay more than that for a days work from a lawyer or a private doctor, people running their own businesses.

Sounds all right to me. I’m in Spain and paid €18k to replaster an entire quite small 3 bed house last year!

I paid 4k for the house to be painted after hanging lining paper 18 years ago.

1.5k for laminate, so probably double that with flooring so 3k - really reasonable price.

Sounds about right. We stripped and wallpapered a large room during lock down as no way of getting someone in and we couldn’t go on our planned holiday. Nearly killed us! Was such hard work! Took us a week - never again!

Go out, buy all the tools yourself, pay for some courses on how to install flooring and crack on.

Exactly how much should lowly skilled labour pay?

For decades the government pushed the idiotic mantra that only University Degrees were needed and anybody without one was just an unemployable idiot. The result is a chronic shortage of the essential workers needed to have functioning homes, transport and infrastructure.

Your quotes are the going rate, "labour" costs also include the Van, tools, registrations, licences, taxes, and most importantly the SKILL to do the job correctly.

You're paying for the àpplication of knowledge, not "just labour".

All I will say is that you are paying for the years and not the hours.

I saw this from a designer on instagram. Might have been cake but the concept is the same. You are paying for the years of experience not for the number of hours it takes.

I started a post like this a while ago and ended up being ripped to pieces, good luck.

I didn't even had a good tradesman, he cahrged through the nose and did a shit job, I'd have done better myself but haven't got time to do it.

Don't know about these particular quotes but yes prices have increased.. its the number of people who want paid in cash that really annoys me. Even for expensive jobs..

My god I screwed up my life choices - 10 years of post school education and more than 20 years working at universities - £180 a day (before tax etc)

I do get that prices have gone up and of course everyone deserves a decent wage - but shouldn’t a university lecturer be able to afford a haircut without a lot of planning??

You could have chosen a higher paying career, electricians, brick layers, plumbers, carpentry all pay significantly more than you currently earn.

I think you're confusing activity with achievement. Are all your years in academia worth more to society than someone who has the skills and qualifications to install a heating system, trace and repair a wiring short, connect a building to the grid or install an electrical sub station?

We are rural East Mids and that doesn’t seem especially high to me. We would probably pay slightly less here total but not far off. We’ve had a lot of plastering and flooring work done. Just the labour to floor our kitchen and hall was £1600.

Sounds reasonable to me.

Could take best part of a month to strip, skim and paint an entire house.

Why don't you DIY if you think you can do it as well at lower cost ?

Why don’t you DIY? You may find you don’t think it’s a bad price after a week.

We got our downstairs fitted with laminate about 13 years ago and paid around £1k then, so £1.5k for a whole house seems reasonable to me!

You could strip wallpaper and paint the walls yourself fairly easily to save some money. Leave the skimming to a pro

Im also south east and I think the flooring quote is cheap!

That's a different story. Far too much tax evasion and benefit fraud in the "black economy" that's costing the country billions.

I refuse to pay anyone in cash. I don't want to be a party to the black economy.

But sadly, it's become endemic with traders offering "cash, no VAT" without being asked as they're clearly not worried about being caught.

And yes, it's no longer just the small jobs. When we needed whole house scaffolding, we were getting quotes of £2k to £3k and 3 of the 4 scaffolders we asked for quotes openly offered to knock off the VAT for cash!

Same when we had our written off car repaired - cost was £3k but the body shop again openly offered to knock off the VAT if we paid cash for "the lads" to do it at a weekend!

Agree, I saw a poster in hairdressers to the same effect....
"It may take me 10 minutes to do the job
But it took me 10yrs to learn/be able to do it in 10 minutes
You are paying for the 10yrs, not the 10 minutes
Sums it up perfectly I thought

£50ph seems a lot for a tradesman - assuming it’s a 8/9hr day like most do 8/4 or 9/5

but if for 2 people that’s fine /normal

£25ph for se is about normal for local for me (south east)

Not excessive at all. We've just paid £500 for decorating one room so £3-5k for the full house is absolutely reasonable.