How Much Do Cabinet Installers Make

I work for several different manufacturers, small custom shops to national suppliers. The big guys like to charge per unit/cabinet. This give them cost certainty, they tell you how much they will pay and you have to decide what is extra. The manufacturer should supply everything, screws glue caulk etc. You become a labour only supplier.

Three units per hour, three to four hundred dollars per day. Start on the top floor and work your way down. Not as far to move your tools at the end of the day. Where about are you in the PNW? I charge $45/box I consider anything and everything a 'box'. Filler strip.

Allright no one on here is going to tell you how much to charge but I'll give a couple of tips on how I do it. I submit price sheets to. Does that make sense? JamesDibben is offline. They wanted a cabinet installer that would be able to install 5 kitchens on the last two days of the week. I bid it and came in. Install Cabinets Yourself with EZ-Level Cabinet Levelers.

Length of crown. I get lots 'interviews'. All sounds great. Few calls back. 100% price related.

Get lotsa calls back to see if I'll cut my price in half. Have a buddy I lend a hand to. He charges roughly $25/box.

He works 'most steady'. I use the cab installs to fill my time remodeling. He works 100% as a cab installer. So he needs the steady can work.

And at $25/hr. He still get's undercut, pricewise. Unless it's a top of the line, very high end, custom layout inhouse cabinet design distributor. They want to pick a low ball price.

Under $20 cab/hour. And they just use up young guys just starting out and hungry for work. Cabinet installs I am familiar with are billed out to the customer at $80.00/cabinet (including install, adj., knobs and pulls & toekick). The installer is paid $45/cabinet. I charge $15 per piece for crown. I agree that each cabinet should be figured at about an hour. I average 7 cabinets a day/ person.

I've been doing about 2 kitchens/week and have been basically transmorgified from a trim and remodel guy into a cabinet installer. My experience has been that since people pay big bucks for cabinets, they are more willing to pay top dollar to have the job done right. Edit to add: My ballpark (install = 1/2 cabinet price) is something I picked up from Comsumer Reports when they did a feature on kitchen cabinets last year. I just checked the 2005 Means info and they agree with what your cabinet installer gets ($20 to $30/cabinet). I consider those prices to be for average, production work. I try to charge more and like you, I strive to do high quality work. Edited 6/27/2005 8:53 am ET by basswood.

Basswood - ' I agree that each cabinet should be figured at about an hour. I average 7 cabinets a day/ person.' We use differnet figures for uppers, lowers, corner cabinets, ceiling hung cabinets, and even then we consider the size of the cabinet. An hour a cabinet though seems high to me unless you are possibly using that hour to also account for other tasks such as bringing the cabinets into the space (or some other task for that matter). I'm thinking a typical cabinet takes anywhere from 20 to 40 minutes with larger cumbersome ones possibly taking an hour. ' My experience has been that since people pay big bucks for cabinets, they are more willing to pay top dollar to have the job done right.'

That's been our experience and what we've found too. Jerrald, I typically install about 14 cabinets in 8 hours solo or about 20 cabinets in a day with a helper (including bringing 'em in). Download Free Before You Quit Your Job Ebook. Then it usually takes me another day to run crown, light rail, toekick, install knobs and pulls, and adjust doors and drawers.

Those details just about knock the average down to 7 cabs/day for me. I should add that, on my jobs, the face frames are screwed to the adjacent cabinet with 3 trim-head screws (not big deck screws), joints and miters tight and flush (like they shoud be--nothing real special there), accurate scribing instead of caulking or scribe molding, etc. My productivity is lower than average but the quality and pay seem to be higher. Average productivity according to your good friend RS Means is 10 cabs/carp/day. I am paid 12% more for wall cabinets, than bases, and 20% more for tall pantry cabinets (as you indicated). I actually agree with you that there is little difference between wall and base cabinet installation.

With my method of installation the wall cabinets are usually easier to put in. I don't complain about the price stucture (there are usually more wall cabinets than bases so I'm glad they pay better here).

I'm puzzled that I don't get paid more for sink bases. I install bases first for two reasons. On big jobs the counter top crew (that waits to measure for tops until base cabs are in) can measure a day earlier. Additionally, bases first gives me a place to put a jig I build out of 1x8 (42'x19-1/4' x7-1/4') so I can just set the wall cabinets on the jig and shim into position and screw into place.

It works so well for me that I use the technique even when working with a helper. Did you buy my Consumer Reports explanation? Edited 6/27/2005 10:12 pm ET by basswood. BUCK - ' I charge $45/box I consider anything and everything a 'box'. Filler strip.

Length of crown. Now what you're doing and saying is starts to make sense to me. A filler often takes the same effort if not more to install than a cabinet box. Quoting Bob Kovacs quoting something he picked up from the Richardson Engineering Services book 'Process Plant Cost Estimating Standards.' The Golden Rule of Construction Cost Estimating: 'Consider not only the cubic foot, cubic yard, lineal foot, square foot, pound or ton but all of the complicating conditions encountered in putting the materials in place.'

Way too many contractors consider just the box when the figure a job and get burned when they find out they didn't account for things like a three piece crown molding or scribes that go into a stone or brick wall! But what I don't like is you don't say where that $45/box figure comes from or how it was derived. Does the $45/box represent.529 labor hours (32 minutes @ $85 per hour) worth of work? Or was the figure just arbitrarily derived? Each piece/part/box/stick/skin 'averages' to take about an hour when it's all said and done. And $45 is my hourly rate.

Short hand for. I also usually have to add in 2 guys for one day for delivery. 2 guys for a day for appliances. Me for an 'extra day' for knobs/nail holes/door and drawer adjustments and clean out.

If the builder/GC doesn't have an on site dumpster or a corner in the basement I can pile everything up into I add another full day. The demo haul doesn't take a full day. But I'm outta bed already.

And I cover the dump fee. If the appliances are set by 'other'. And theres a double sub zero. There's also an extra 'day' charge. As I know I'm still gonna have to fight with it to get it perfect. Basswood - ' Expect to pay about half the price of the cabinets for the installation.' Naw don't say that.

That based on bad old construction mythology. When I first started out as a carpenter 29 years ago after work in the bars during happy hours I used to talk with guys who would say things like charge 2 times materials or charge X times materials and it was all just BS and nothing was grounded in any kind of logical pricing logic. Luckily I didn't listen since that didn't seem to make any sense (and luckily I also quite drinking too).

Download Free Software Dips Rocscience Crack. Jerrald, On the subject of installation costing about 1/2 the price of the cabinets: That was an average arrived at by Consumer Reports last year. I thought it interesting as cheap cabinets can take longer to install than high end cabinets. The cheap stuff is easier to rack out of square, is more likely to have crooked face frames, require more adjustments, etc.

What it told me is that the more people pay for cabinets the more they are willing to pay for installation. It doesn't mean they take longer to install, just that you can make more per hour. The more expensive the cabinets do require that you are more skilled (face frames scribed to fit the wall instead of caulked in, toekick scribed to fit the floor instead of 1/4 round, etc), since the customer expects a high quality installation.