Builders Quotes

[baffledmummy]

our designer shared a completed tender template with builder quotes to give us an idea of costings for budgeting purposes. All came in within a few thousand of each other but the individually priced elements varied massively.
question is, once you have received the quotes, can you then exclude items that you can do yourself and save money that way, or is the build priced as a whole?
an example is some of the decorating (painting) is quoted as 3-4 thousands on 2 of the quotes and low hundreds for the third. Could we just say…right, we’ll do the paining ourselves and therefore remove the decorating element from the bid and hence agree lower price with the builder? Or is that a no-no?

Hopeful bump!

No reason why you shouldnt negotiate with them.

You can however our builder (and all builders) need to make a profit so they will cost up the work and build in a profit margin, so removing certain elements (say removing 5k of painting) won’t actually save you that 5k, because they’ll want to raise the price of something else to get their margin.

also, unless you’re an amazing decorator, please don’t remove something like that. Feel free to white wash all of the rooms but let the professions do it. All that money then ruined with wobbly lines and patchy paintwork.

Ah yes @TheGlitterati i did wonder looking at the quotes whether they had decided the price of the job in totality and then just backfilled the individual elements to make it add up. My feeling was if we removed bits like decorating that it wouldn’t make a difference to the overall cost so better to include rather than exclude from the tender if that makes sense. And yes I agree I would never do paint myself nor let my DH loose with the painting…it was a theoretical example really)

Not always true.
DH puts a massive price on decorating, not because he wants to push profit up elsewhere ( most don't do that) he costs things out at what they cost.He does it and is very honest wit6h every customer because he hates decorating, he then will recommend either our decorator who is very reasonable or customer can get quotes/do it self.

Yes I've al and thought that was the point of a detailed quote. Not so much doing it myself, but I might not do a room or build that wardrobe or add that patio etc.
I used to renovate houses for a living and though I managed and got the quotes for each job myself, if it was higher than my budget then I'd either change the spec or whatever.

Our builder allowed us to opt out of items, and deducted the exact amount shown on the quote. Mind you, this was because they'd included profit/overheads separately as a fixed percentage, rather than lumped in with each and every line item as @TheGlitterati 's did.