Carpentry

[DomPom47]

Does £4,500 sound reasonable for a carpenter to build a 3 door and 2 door wardrobe? Based in London if that makes a difference to your opinions, no idea how much these things are supposed to cost.

I think I paid about that recently. Meticulous joiner. One side had two hanging rails, the other one had hanging rail, shoe rack and shelves. Storage shelf over both. Sprayed a custom colour.

Thank you.

Surely this depends on the size and specification ? Are there shelves or drawers ? Are the doors standard size or custom build ? Is it made from painted MDF or solid hardwood ?

2door wardrobe: 4 draws at bottom, rail at top with a shelf above it.
3 door wardrobe: 5 draws at bottom, and a rail across.
it’s mdf and from what I understand 4 coats of paint.

I'm in Scotland so that seems expensive but presumably the biggest cost is labour.

With the extreme rise in timber and fixtures (drawer runners/hinges etc) prices it is reasonable. Especially as the units will be manufactured and installed

I work in the industry, albeit commercial bespoke rather than domestic, but across the board there are huge increases in raw timber materials - approx. 84% since January. There is also a huge rise in ironmongery prices, much of it comes in from the Far East/Europe and shipping/cargo costs mean the actual items are probably 2/3's more that they were pre pandemic/pre Brexit.

What wood? I ordered some stair parts recently and paid for them online, then got a phone call saying the price from their supplier had gone up so much they had cancelled my order. Though I'd have paid more because I understand the situation and didn't want many, they said they were made in larger batches and not enough other people would pay the new prices. This was oak...

@BlueMongoose - it's pretty much timber. MDF, Oak, Maple, Ash etc - all of these have increased. Cargo costs are a big contributer.

Plywood has also doubled since the end of last year. We also have the added issue that none of our clients want to touch Russian timber. The unfortunate thing is that much of the ply is manufactured from Russian logs - even Latvian and Finnish plywood. The current climate is challenging to say the least.

Many of our suppliers are now stating that they have the right to cancel any orders without prior warning.

@starfleet, yep, our order was just cancelled. I do understand why. I'd have been willing to pay double or triple the price to get the wretched things, as I only needed a few, they didn't cost a lot in the first place, and the overall cost to me compared to the overall job they are part of was irrelevant to me, but I get it that they need to have a big enough order to be able to get the things made; most pepel who want stair parts want a lot and the price increase to them would be too much.
I'm postponing them till Phase 2 of the job, probably in a year or two, hoping things will have calmed down a bit by then.

Thank you for this, I guess everything genuinely is rising in cost and some things are more steep than others.