I am so confused; we did not get the job that we bid. I was told that my price was 25% higher. I just do not understand how anyone can drop the price that much. Then I spoke with a friend who bid a large job from subfloor up, with flooring to be hand-scraped on the job site. The homeowner told him that he was 30-35% higher.
I lost the job to a guy who rents his tools and has no insurance. The state tells us that we need to police ourselves and call in contractors with no license or workers comp-like we can do that. So you see the confused mindset I am in. It's one thing to lose work to someone when it's apples to apples, but when it's to someone who is working for cash and paying no taxes... what can you do but just keep doing the best work you can and trust that folks spread the word?
We started the day staining a southern yellow pine with quick-dry stain. While that was drying we ate dinner and went to do a repair on a shower tile job we did. The tile was cut just a little big and once they put the cover on the valve it has about a 1/6th gap. So cut out the old tile and fit a new one in. About as easy as it gets on a repair; I just hate that we made a simple mistake... but it happens, so just go fix it and keep the homeowner happy. Now tell me how nice these folks are: They wanted to pay me to fix it? It was our mistake and they wanted to pay me.
We went back to the stain job and it was dry, so we rolled on the first coat and it looked good. The pine is hard to stain and keep it uniform but we did it and yep, the pride hat went on. The homeowner likes the stain and made comments about how did we get it so uniform. This was a resand, and it was not the best it could have been. Always happy to make folks happy, though.
We will go back and put on the next coat in the morning and then get ready for the floating floor job we start Wednesday. We are going to do the floor in a room that once was a porch and now is a family room. They have had carpet for the past 5 years and want wood real bad. They removed the carpet in the rest of the house and their children have seen huge improvement with allergies, so they want wood in the whole house. We are going to recoat the entire house and install the new flooring in the family room. Well, the best thing to do is our best and never give up.
