Carpentry estimating
Rough framing through finish trim.
Takeoffs and bid pricing for carpentry contractors — the structure, the blocking nobody scoped, the doors and hardware, and the millwork. Back to you inside 48 hours with every assumption written down.
What gets counted
Rough carpentry
- Wood and light-gauge wall framing, by size and spacing
- Floor and roof framing, joists, rafters, trusses
- Headers, beams, posts and engineered lumber
- Wall and roof sheathing, subfloor
- Furring, strapping, nailers and ledgers
- Pressure-treated and fire-retardant-treated material called out separately
Blocking & backing
- Casework, countertop and shelf backing
- Grab bars, handrails and accessory blocking
- TV, equipment and fixture supports
- Door and window buck framing
- Roof curbs, nailers and equipment supports
- Counted by location, because that's how it gets installed
Doors, frames & hardware
- Door schedule take-off, by type and rating
- Hollow metal and wood frames
- Hardware sets priced against the schedule
- Rated openings and required labeling
- Installation labor separated from supply
Finish & millwork
- Base, casing, crown and standing trim
- Paneling, wainscot and wall cladding
- Casework and architectural woodwork
- Countertops — solid surface, quartz, laminate
- Shelving, closet systems, specialties
- Stairs, rails and balustrade
Where carpentry packages lose money
- Blocking that lives in three different drawing sets. It's in the architectural details, the interiors package and the equipment schedule, and it's rarely in the carpentry scope narrative. I go looking for it on purpose.
- Hardware sets read as a count instead of a schedule. Forty openings is not forty of the same thing. Closers, exit devices, electrified hardware and rated labeling move the number a long way.
- Treated material assumed, not scheduled. FRT and PT where the code requires it, priced as such, not carried at standard lumber cost.
- Millwork shop drawings, submittals and lead time treated as free. They're neither free nor fast, and on a tight schedule they're the thing that bites.
- Trim taken as linear feet with no waste logic. Long runs, short returns and mitered work are different problems with different factors.
- HVHZ framing and fastening on Florida work. Connector schedules, uplift, fastening patterns and product approval change both the material list and the labor.
- Installation labor folded into supplier quotes. If the number came from a millwork house, it's usually material — the install is yours, and it needs pricing.
How your labor gets priced
Carpentry labor varies more between contractors than almost any other trade, so a national average is close to useless. I'll ask what your crews produce — linear feet of wall framed per man-day, openings set per day, feet of base run per day — and price to that.
If you don't track it yet, I'll use my own rates and show every one of them in the summary so you can correct me. Tell me where I'm wrong on the first job and the second one is sharper. That's the whole point of using the same estimator twice.
Send the plans on your next one.
First takeoff is free, on a job you're actually bidding. Include the bid date and I'll confirm within the hour whether I can make it.