Got approached in Home Depot today .

[Matthew Paul]

I was approached by a guy while I was getting some treated lumber . The guy asks if I was a contractor ?  I tell him " Yes " . He asks if I am looking for work and I tell him , no not really we are busy .  Then he tells me he is pricing lumber for a deck and asks " Do I know anybody who works by the hour , because the estimates he has been getting are too high . I say licensed contractors are not hourly , they bid jobs  I ask him are they all pretty close in price  ? he says yes .  I tell him if the prices are all close than the prices are reasonable .  He had his drawing with him and I took a look and gave him a ball park of about $14,000 . His reaction was ," thats about where everybody else was ".  " Well thats the price then .  then he made the comment " i should be a contractor then at those prices they do 8 decks and make over $100K a year "    I kinda laughed and replied " $ 100K a year , I would hope not , thats a pretty bad year . 

[David Sisson]

I'm an architect and people sometimes are shocked at the price "it's just drawings". Well, if it's just drawings, I do it all day long and I need to eat too. "Make over 100K a year" but you also need to buy 40K of materials and pay 50K of wages and overhead. I don't envy contractors, it's a tough business.