I'm terrible at bidding out jobs and I just picked up a side-job to do...

Here's the scenario: The building I work in is a 5-story office building - we occupy the 4th and 5th floors and, until recently, half of the 3rd floor. I am in the process of moving the training rooms from the 3rd floor up to the 4th floor - the furniture is moved and I am now gutting all the old CAT-3 and CAT-5 cable that we had running through the ceilings (I need the CAT-5 for one of the 4th floor rooms). This is all being done on the company dime...

The building manager came to me and offered to pay me (on the side) to remove all the theater-style stepped/tiered flooring from the 3 rooms on the 3rd floor. The total area of the 3 rooms is 3,303 sq. ft. From what I can tell, the flooring consists of 1/2" plywood nailed down to 2x4's, 2x6's, and 2x12's - I don't know how it's all framed together yet. Being that it's all nailed together, it should be relatively easy to pop it apart - with big enough pry-bars and whatnot. They want to salvage as much of the lumber as possible - except for the plywood which isn't salvageable.

Being that there are contractors on this forum, I'd like some feedback on how I should bid this job and for how much. The building owners/manager are long-time bookkeepers so, haggling may not be much of an option lol...

Thanks.

 

I usually try to get $1/ft. for ripping floors, but that is more footage than I have bid on before. If I am not sure how to bid a job sometimes I call Lowe's or Home Depot and ask them what they charge and just charge a bit less.

 

That's a lot more work, taking stuff apart carefully. When lifting a floor I usually rip thru it with a skilsaw and carry it out in sections. For everything else there's the sawzall and the sledgehammer.

There's for sure going to be a conflict of interest between the owner wanting to salvage as much material as possible, and you needing to get the work done in a reasonable amount of time so you can collect your money and go home.

If you already have a job working for these people then they know your work habit and should be open to you doing the work at an hourly rate. That way they can decide where to draw the line on salvaging the materials.

 

Thanks for the input guys. I think we've got it figured out, more or less. I've been coordinating work efforts with the building manager for 4-years so, yeah, he knows how I do things...

I popped up a corner of one of the platforms with just a screwdriver and a hammer - if popped surprisingly easy so, I'm hoping the rest of it will be relatively simple. Luckily, they don't want to salvage the metal edge trim so, I don't have to worry about being careful ripping that crap up.

I'm going to give it a go in one of the rooms this weekend just to see what's involved - from there, I'll have a better idea of how to tackle the other 2 rooms.