No I don't own a paint shop, i am a Licensed general contractor and Air conditioning contractor, I own a construction company and air conditioning company.

There is no such thing as a standard price, we don't have a book that tells us what to charge to do a repair.

Being expensive is one thing, i guess that would be what you call being higher priced than the standard rate.

What being ripped off is if I tell you I am going to do a job for say $500, tell you what the job includes, but don't do all the work I said I was going to do or used different parts, say non OEM when i said I was going to use OEM parts.

On the other hand say I quoted you $1500 for the job, told you I was using non OEM parts and I did the job exactly like i told you I was going to do the job, you were not ripped off, i was just more expensive than either you wanted to pay or other people may have been willing to do the job.

Just because a shop is expensive as long as they do what they say they are going to do, they are not ripping you off, on the other hand a nother shop my bid the job at half the price and not do what they said they would and they in fact are the ones who ripped you off.

I don't know where you work but I doubt you own your own business because you would understand this.

What line of work are you in?

BTW most people in body shops are paid by the hour, not the job, so when they are sitting around bs'ing with each other and wasting time, they are costing the owner of the shop money and that causes his overhead to go up, that leads to higher prices.

A lot Hourly workers have the mentallity that they can screw around and goof off, do personal errands etc. while they are on company time, it gets so bad on my construction projects that I have to have a superintendant that makes sure people are working(so I hire a guy whoes job it is to make sure everyone else is doing their job), I don't hire smokers and I don't allow my employee's to talk on their cell phones either, if they have a bonafide emergency and have to take a call that is one thing but I don't know why people think they should get paid to smoke and talk on the phone when they are supposed to be working.

When you own a business you pay more attention to things like this, you also understand why things cost so much.

You would be surprised at what it costs to build and maintain a proper spray booth and comply with all of the EPA as well as local ond state regulations.

 

I am in Florida, I don't have a Union card either, but I am a Licensed Contractor.

There is a difference between hiring a professional and doing it yourself.

Your floor may have come out nice, but did you have to buy any tools?

and yes you may have saved money if you did the job right but your time is worth something.

Painting a truck needs to be done in a very clean environment without dust, laying down a hardwood floor does not.

Funny story about DIY, a friend of mine called me several years ago and wanted to know what it would cost to put a condensing fan motor in a condensing unit for his brother, I quoted him probably $300-$350, a couple of weeks later he calls me back and asked me to go look at his brother's A/C unit, when i get there a new condensing fan motor and blade was installed, but the compressor had an open in it and when i was tracing out the circuit, I fould out he wired the fan wrong and since it was not an exact replecemnt motor it had to be wired differently and he had an 'extra' wire that he didn't know what to do with so he plugged it into the start capacitor and it ended up smoking the compressor.

He spent about $200 in parts because he bought the parts from Grainger and he thought he was saving himself $100-$150, well as it turns out not only was he out the money for the parts he bought from Grainger, I sold him a new condensing unit, so in the long run it cost hin a couple of thousand dollars when he tried to save a couple of hundred.

I took and [assed the state exam to be a plumbing contractor but when I have a back up in a drain line or sewerline atmy house, a customers house or on one of my buildings or jobs, I call a plumbing contractir because they specialize in that and to be honest, I have had enough of that kind of work, they come out and do a job, sometimes it takes them an hour, Iget a bill for $200 and I happily pay them, I am sure I could find someone cheaper, but Don is great and whenever I call him up, even on a holiday, they are there and get the job done right away, they are expensive at times but they are not ripping me off, I think they provide a good service at a good price (even though itis expensive).

What do you do for a living?

 

Jeez, what is it with you and wanting to know everyone else's occupation? Wanna see my W-2 forms from last year? Please share some of your painting experience with me, here's one of my Mustang that I did myself, in a garage that I also built myself.



The entire build (yes, EVERYTHING) was done 100% by myself and it's not "pretty good for homemade" either. There's less than 1 quart of filler in the entire car, and most of that wound up as sanding dust. It's much better than any pro shop around here can turn out. I consider myself a perfectionist and that's what separates my "DIY" stuff from the hacks calling themselves professionals these days. It doesn't matter if I'm doing drywall, flooring, plumbing, tuning the carbs on my Mustang or mowing the lawn, it's done right if it's done by me.
As for what I do for a job, I'm a CNC programmer/machinist. Unlike carpenters who cover boo-boos with trim, or the HVAC guy who can always tell himself "nobody will ever see that" my stuff is measured in tenths of a thousandth of an inch. By doing it the "DIY" way, I have learned to maintain, troubleshoot and repair the machining center I operate as well as the HAAS factory-trained tech we used to pay $175/hr. I'm the only programmer in our area, so I don't get to ask for help when I get stuck, it's my responsibility to fix it myself. I know "myself" is a dirty word these days, in an era of "just call the repairman" mentality, but it's who I am. So excuse me if I'm not EPA-certified when choose to do my own body and paint for a couple extra bucks now and then, and go ahead and look down your nose at me when I ask the guy at Home Depot for help finding something. I may have to buy a few tools to get stuff done, or take a class or read a book, but it somehow gets done.

 

I don't care about your W2, just curious as to what type ofwork you are in, since you have W2's obviously you are an employee.

Employee's or hourly workers who have never owned or ran a business have no clue what is involved with running a business and what it takes to keep the doors open.

I know a guy who bragged about how much he and his fellow workers screwed around and sabotaged the line at work so they could get long breaks while the line was repaired, he told me about how much money he made, yet he moved from Michigan to florida and was working for me as an $8 an hour porter, i asked him why he left michigan, he said the plant closed and they started making the

From the picture your Mustang looks good, but to be honest you can't tell much by looking at a picture.

A friend of mine owns a body shop, the guy is good, a perfectionist, and for him to do a complete paint job on a car like that, would be about $5,000-$7,000.

He takes the car a part and paints it, he doesn't just prep it, mask it off and shoot the top of the parts.

BTW since you painted your Mustang and are happy with it, why not paint the parts for your truck?

It seems like it would be a lot easier to paint a few truck parts than to paint a whole car.

I use an HVLP on some of my jobs and when we shot the steel door jambs that have been properly prepped for a commercial building I built, it looks like an automotive finish, they came out great.

 

Thats funny you should say that about being a perfectionist, I have hired and fired some so called perfectionists, that dis some very sloppy work, I had one guy Chris who kept telling me about what a great plumber and machinist he was, yet wehn he tried drilling some 5" angle iron to mount bolt my condensing unit stands on, he took forever, couldn't get the job done and insisted the way to drill steel is using a hammer drill.

That guy was so dood he got fired and I had to fix his work.

When I run A/C lines i use tubing benders and everything comes out cleanly, even though it is just on a roof of the side of someones house or in an attic.

My electrical contractor even commented on how clean the work was done on the a/c lines on the roof, he thought i was a little too picky on their work, but every switch is the exact same distance inside the door and off of the floor, when the elctricians would add metal blocking it was crooked, I had my guys fix it, even though it gets coveredup, i expect everything to be level and plumb, and the boxes to be secured, nothing worse than a box that hinges on a stud, thats why I insist on blocking behind every box.

When we frame a building, all the studs are perfectly plumb and I have fired frames who don't listen to me and want to argue with me, the worst thing one of my guys can do is argue with me or a framer say "it doesn't matter it gets covered up anyway.

I make my finishers do clean work even on fire taping, i can't stand when a guy takes banjo and does a half assed job on a firewall, because 'no one will see it' well i see it and ifit isn't done to my specifiation, it gets redone.

I am hard on my guys but I am worse on myself, that is because when I worked for my dad he expected more out of me and my brother than the other employee's and we were the ones who always got stuck mopping up other peoples hack work.

When we complained, he said I pay you gys very well for what you do, I expect more from you guys than anyone else because you are my sons and if you don't like it, leave, well that was back in the mid 80's and we were making a bout $50,000 a year, so we shut up and did as he asked us to do, and we were paid piece work, not by the hour, so the more work we did the more we made, butif we had callbacks, it kept us from doing another install so we learned real fast not to ever have a call back.

Since you are such a perfectionist you would probably be a lot happier doing the job yourself, in some ways you sound like me and to be honest, even if you do hire a body shop to do the paintwork, you will probably find flaws in it and not be happy.

One reason I do a lot of my own work is because I get tired of hiring so called professionals, and the work they do is half assed at best.

Ther are very few people that do better work than me, one of them is my cabinet maker, he can build cabinets and furniture better than I can and he is the only guy I use, I don't bother taking bids from other people, I give him the specs and often times I have him build things a certain way, ocassionally he will make an 'executive' decision without consulting me and last time he did it, he had to remake some cabinets because he didn't understand why I wanted them that way, but the guy is the best cabinet maker i have seen and he is good at building furniture but no where as good as my older brother is, he is a true craftsman, much better than I would ever be.

An office building I just built, actually a level III renovation and addition, all of the door jamb headers are exactly the same height, no variance at all, all of the reveals between to jambs are the same except 1, and it was off by 3/8" and that was because one of my framers screwed up the layout, 3/8" isn't bad but I can see it when I walk down the hallway.

I have a recall on my truck already and I am not too happy about having some dealership monkey working on my truck, mecahnics aren't what they used to be, I went to school to be a mechanic then later decided that wasn't the ine of work i wanted to be in, now a kid buys a set of tools and now he is a mechanic, and I think dealerships are worse now than independants.

It used to be a dealership mechanic was the best of the best, now it seems as though they have 1 senior tech that knows what he is doing and then a bunch of $10-$12 and hour guys that guess at how to do the job and then when they screw up the job expect the senior tech to bail them out.

Same with body shops there are maybe 3 or 4 good ones in my area, it used to be the dealerships had the best body shops, now they are hacks for the most part.

It is hard to find people who do quality work.

 

can this thread just be closed or moved to OT??

 

 

Not in our shop!

The jobs in our shop are paid based on the rated hours needed to do the job.
If a painter can do a 6 hour job in 5 hours and meet the quality standards he gets paid the 6 hours allotted.
If he takes 6 hours to do a job rated at 5 hours he receives 5 hours pay.

A painter can do as many allotted hours work as he wants each week.
We have guys that stay into the evening completing work and they make 50-60 hours a week.
Our body men are on the same system.

One thing I'm going to point out and that is the work that comes into our shop has a promised completion date.
Any worker that consistently misses due dates will not be tolerated and will be looking for another job.

We have two painters each of which has a assistant that is paid based on the hours the painter turns out.

There are four body men, and only one has an assistant paid based on the work done. The other three do not want a helper.

Our shop has only one hourly worker (the lot boy who cleans the vehicles for delivery) and he gets a few hours overtime most weeks.

One of the painters helpers started as the lot boy as did the body mans helper.

It's the same as a mechanic The job books at so many hours and if it gets done in less time they earn the book rate.

 

I am one of those backyard painters that does this stuff in the garage. Based on what you are telling me, I'd quote it at $100 plus material. That being said, paint would most likely be a pint of paint (half if it can be mixed that small). In a gray metallic, that would be $60-$100 for just the base color coat. Clear would be another $30-$40, and misc materials would be another $30.

Steve S.
To many to list.

 

What set you off? A guy comes in and asks if some quotes were reasonable, that's all. Nobody even said anything about body shop rates being out of line. Work slow or something? Just like to complain about guys that prefer to do work themselves rather than pay you? You should like that, as you pointed out in a lot of cases you make more fixing their screwups.

And your comment about the W2 just shows how little you know about the business side of ownership. There's a lot of people that own their own business that get a W2, they're employed by their own company just like anyone else. It's really common and has tax benefits.

Also, if you're going to start a rant at least pay attention. Sandman wasn't even the one wanting to get his grille painted, he just advised the guy to look into doing it himself. In case you hadn't noticed that's one of the main goals of this site, DIY help. But I guess if you ever need your truck worked on you'll just go to the dealer since they have overhead and need to make a living too, right?

 

WOW! got my dose of daily Drama!

 

Jmiley A bit of advice and remember it's worth what it costs;

You have been a member here for only 43 days.
Slow down and quit being a know it all.
I've been reading some of your 59 posts and I am not impressed. (See #23 above)

This is another one that caught my eye;

From; https://www.ford-trucks.com/forums/1...l#post11217362
When I was in High School I took auto mechanics and a guy came out and did a demonstration with Slick50 treatment and ever since then I have always used it or other treatments, the one I just used in my 2012 F250 was Duralube.

I don't take very good care of my vehicles, especially when they get older.

I have a 2000 F250 with 242,000 miles on it and it runs great, and I have run it so low on oil that the pressure guage would go to zero and I would have to add a gallon of oil, I think one reason why I have gotten lucky like this is because of the oil treatments I have used in the past, plus Ford builds a good motor (Gas).

IMHO That post makes me figure that you just don't have the knowledge to be giving me or anyone else advice.

It's been a long hard day. 7 tows totalling 500 miles and I'm out of patience.

 

Reps were heading your way, But the great moderators in the sky ahot me down!!

 

Thanks but the mods don't do that. It's part of the system controls.

 

My friend painted his kid's CRX in their backyard out in the open! I was amazed how good it ended up looking. Still, if it really mattered, I'd have a pro do it in a paint booth. If you're in California, I had my wife's old civic painted by a place called in-and-out (not the burger joint) a few years ago. I went with the cheapest version ($600?) and it still looks good today.