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.

You surely understand about what you have to pay when you're self employed? Strange so someone with your education and position in society doesn't....

I’m in the north and a builders day rate here is £250 a day.
I think that’s perfectly reasonable.
Bet all the computer people can’t do it!
SE builders have to factor in their sick pay/holiday pay/materials/transport etc etc

Strip wallpaper yourself.

I had some work done internally to my flat some years ago which cost £15k. That's including materials. I thought it was a lot until I realised how much my builder had to pay out for, and all the things he needed to use don't come cheap. I imagine Brexit and the Pandemic might have pushed costs up more since. You aren't just paying the contractor, you are paying for his/her costs too.

Our project manager left his note book at ours. Dh had a look realised the seemingly vast sums we were paying were totally fair considering his outlay.

Been quoted 10k for a new bathroom. I got other quotes roughly the same. It's just the current going rate.

Stripping wallpaper and painting walls isn’t exactly difficult! Many people could also lay laminate flooring - I can kneel so would struggle. DH did ours and fitted the kitchen and bathroom so I’ve been spoilt over the years as we’ve never had to pay anyone to do jobs but he says the only thing he wouldn’t do there is the skimming

You really get a good temperature read on the insecurity and economic vulnerability of the struggling middle class in these threads filled with envy and spite for the trades.

Two bespoke fitted wardrobes, floor to ceiling in height.

I know quite a few posh / middle class builders thinking about it.

Yes. So do I. I know plenty who used their earnings and skills to benefit from the rising cost of housing over the years, either through renovations or as landlords, and have accumulated a tidy amount of wealth. They certainly don't spend it, as a pp complained scathingly, down at the Weatherspoons

I don’t know, why did you?

@NoNoNoNo2025 presumably you studied for 3 years because you wanted a career in that subject.

You are comparing an individual base salary (which in universities still includes generous public sector benefits to augment the base value) with the service cost of running business. A tradesman’s day rate includes all the costs of running a business, of which employee hourly rate is one part. I’ve never met a tradie with a final salary pension either.

Apples and pears.

The brutal reality is that my builder, electrician, heating chap etc all provide excellent service to me and make my quality of life better. For the rare job they don’t cover they have made excellent and reliable recommendations. There are relatively few middle class jobs which are actually more useful to me that those trades.

I do wonder at the quality of maths and business education when posters cannot distinguish between an hourly charge from a business and individual base salary (pre benefits).

I know it’s almost childlike to think the small business person takes your whole payment and tucks the lot into his or her bank account 🙄. Fellow small business owner.

I think it depends on the area and how many people are attending to do the work.
To cut costs, could you carry out the decorating ourselves?

Dp is a decorator, there's a lot more that goes into it than most people realise especially when you're talking about stripping paper, things will need to be filled, sanded, probably filled again, sanded, pva'd / prepped etc. It's a time consuming job and can be really expensive. For a 3 bed full house 4k (middle of quote) works out at 10 days of work according to your £400 a day. I'm assuming you will have multiple decorators on site as a house of this size will take longer than 10 days if it's done right? If so you have split the cost between each worker, no single decorator is making £400 a day.

This is true

Pay everyone a living wage unless it costs you more?

Seems to be the general gist of it.

I think you can expect it to get more expensive. I was having a chat to the decorators who did my house today when I saw them on an outside job. They are trying to slow down a bit now but they said if they wanted to work more they would be busier than ever. They said young people don’t want to go into it as too much hard graft and everyone expects big money to start with.
This is a business that has supported 3 guys with a good livelihood.

i was impressed when they did my house and very professional finish. You could visibly see how much effort and time went into the prep..

Yes, there are lots of trades who are aging out of the profession with fewer apprentices in the pipeline to replace them.

Also, the high hourly wages and tax bandings act as a disincentive to work longer and longer hours - and so it futher skews the supply and demand equation.

Like hospital consultants the tax system incentivises them to work fewer hours as if they go above £100k they basically pay any extra to hmrc. So they are downing tools to stay under that tax bracket. So short sighted.

Yes, hardly the model for growing an economy, is it? Still, one for another thread.

What happened to DIY and men who can just do stuff? I remember when i was little, my dad gutted the entire house and redid it by himself, every time my FiL comes round he fixes something, my husband installed our laminate floor, replaced the taps in the bath, replaced the entire toilet, put in some extra plug sockets including a waterproof one outside, he built both our decks from scratch, the list goes on and on. Maybe I'm spoiled cos my Dad and FiL were both engineers, but i just assumed men could do most things. My husband is not perfect but he'll have a go.

A plasterer mate of mine is having a really hard time with apprentices. They are either thick, lazy or both, they don't listen, they want to get stuck in too early without learning the basics. He had a Mum complain to him, cos in two weeks all her son had been doing was filling buckets of water.