How to Bid Cabinet Painting: Everything You Need to Know to Price Your Bids to Win!

This paint life TV, I'm Chrissy Idaho painter in this video. I'm going to talk about how I estimate or Bidknit cabinet repaint jobs So if you want to know how I make money and how I bid cabinet jobs Stay tuned for this video and also one last thing Don't forget to hit the subscribe button. Don't forget to hit the notification bell That way you get notified every time I come out with a new video It's free simple and easy to do click the subscribe button click the notification bell right next to it You don't click on both nothing's going to happen. It's free simple now. Stay tuned for how I estimate cabinet jobs All right, now let's talk about how I estimate cabinets in the estimating process I've taught on how to estimate I'll do exterior estimates online using Google Earth Talk about how to do interior estimates and estimating fences and stuff like that and estimated cob cabinets I'm working on a cabinet job right here And this is a vanity makeover video if you want to see this video coming up How I turn a $25 cabinet into a $500 cabinet stay tuned for that video But how do you go about estimating a job like this or how do you go about estimating a full kitchen if you don't have any Experience and I estimated cabinets one way for quite a bit of my career And I came up with a different method that was very simple and easy to do and when I do estimating I like my estimate estimating process really to be very simple I like to be able to do it over the phone if I have to not even show up at the job site So how do you do that you got to have like systems processes numbers that all make sense where you can just ask a customer a bunch of Questions come up with a number and give them an estimate and like my exterior bids a lot of times They don't even drive out to the house I just look at it on Google Earth and I want my System or estimate process to be very simple and easy and how I come up with an Estimate for a cabinet job is I start off with a door or drawer price and There's a fixed price that I just count the doors or drawers and then that will give me a number and that's a base price Now when I do estimating whether it's an exterior whether it's an interior I do have these fixed prices like on an exterior have a fixed price of a $1.65 square foot and that is my base price And everything is built off of that using Numbers and also the human element there are times you're gonna have to go out to a job There's times when I have to go out to a cabinet job and look at the job and use Human judgment and see if my numbers are coming out rights or Is the job gonna be a lot more difficult or a lot easier where I can make some adjustments to those numbers But I have a cabinet right here and I'll walk you in and show you a full kitchen set of cabinets And how I went about estimating the full set of kitchen cabinets, but it's it's a door and drawer price So there's a there's drawers right here. You got one two three three drawers You got a drawer right here a fourth drawer and then you've got a door and my base price per drawer is $95 per drawer and then it's a $115 for door so here's a door and here's a drawer front right here So $95 per drawer $115 per door and that's the base price that everything is built off from there But now there's gonna be some things you're gonna run into with cabinet paint jobs You have oak grain that's gonna make the job a lot more difficult than a set of kitchen cabinets That's already painted and you're just repainting it versus starting with a really grainy bear grainy wood like oak and so I'm gonna talk about some of the additional charges that are built into that base price or not built into It's added on to that base price of a hundred and fifteen dollars and ninety five dollars All right, so I'm gonna talk about one of the things you're gonna run into in the cabinet repaints that It's a whole lot more work that you're definitely gonna want to add on an additional charge to your cabinet Draw or door price so right here. This is one and it's oak wood grain and anytime you have a real grainy wood It's gonna take a lot of work to get rid of that grain now Let me talk about customer expectations a little bit because when you're doing a cabinet painting job This is where whether you're talking to the customer on the phone or whether you're talking to him in person a lot of times Cabinet jobs are a lot better dealt with and estimating done in person where you can look at the cabinets and talk about your process How you go about painting but what is the customer's expectations are the customers expectations that this look like a flat finish and Not a wood grained and in the end result really because this thing right here was designed to be stained and Lackered and not to have a flat finish and look like a birch cabinet door But if a customer wanted this thing to look like a birch cabinet door not have any wood grain to it It's gonna take a lot of work to eliminate the wood grain just like this We're using aqua coat on this cabinet door because we're trying to eliminate probably 90% of the wood grain of fat to it and the like the pin holes and dark shadows created when you paint something like this white using Aqua coat we got three coats of aqua coat standing in between aqua coat that takes a lot of time and effort to deal with that If you try to paint oak white without feeling any grain at all Probably 90% of your customers are not gonna like the outcome of the cabinet But you do have to discuss in the very beginning You know expectations and then you know budget I mean what happens is the additional charges just make the price go up higher Maybe the customer doesn't have a budget that is as high to fill wood grain But they really want their cabinets painted and they're not as picky as eliminating all the wood grain So I have a price per door or drawer and it's $20 per door or drawer and the face frames are always included And I'll get to that down the road when I'm talking door and drawer price the face frame is included in that price So you got to eliminate wood grain here and you got to eliminate wood grain there It's $20 per door or drawer and that includes the wood face frames So I do have side panels on here And this is just a laminate side panel that has just an imitation would affect on it I don't have to eliminate any grain on there. We'll talk about side panels a little bit Because that's an additional charge two in a kitchen when I walk you in to and show you this kitchen There's a large upside panel and to where a refrigerator is and what I actually do is I break that side panel up into Door fronts and so I look at a side panel in an average size door front I'm gonna say it's about this big. I'm gonna say how many door So we'll fit in that panel and I'm gonna call that like the one panel. We'll see it's about four door panels We'll cover that whole side refrigerator panel. So I'm gonna call it four door fronts and that's how I Deal with really large panels and the face frames are always included large panels are broken down into door fronts And we'll give you an example. We walk walk into this kitchen the next item that I have as an additional charge to my door And drawer front as we see quite often is naughty all their cabinets and naughty all there's gonna be an Alder that has a lot of open knots in it and there was a stained and lacquered design with the knot Design that looks really cool But what happens is when you start to paint it and what's popular now is painting on white You're gonna see really dark shadows all over the place and first the first time I ever painted a set of cabinets like that I thought wow It's gonna look really cool with these knots. I painted them. It didn't look really cool with the knots at all It looked really unfinished the knots stood out really bad because they were basically a black shadow and the white cabinets And so we went back and refilled it and refilling knots is another time-consuming process It's not as time-consuming as is grain filler because you're filling the grain on the entire cabinet But you're just finding the knots and we fill them with spackle first So one coat of spackle then we go over with two coats of bondo Sand that and then the knot will be completely eliminated and you do have to go over it with what we call bondo glazing putty not bondo It's bondo glazing putty and it's an automotive product and if you use that product two coats and sand it Properly you won't ever see where that knot was What you don't want to do is not get it coat enough and With enough bondo or spackle where you actually see an indentation where that knot is because that will look good Either but I charged $10 per door or drawer on a knotty all their set of kitchen cabinets as an additional charge So on top if that if I was charging the doors It's a hundred and fifteen dollars per door if it's naughty all their I'm going to add $10 to that So it's going to be a hundred and twenty five dollars per door if they're naughty all their got a drawer front It'd be ninety five dollars per drawer front add ten dollars to that It's going to be a hundred and five dollars to eliminate any knots on if it's a naughty all their cabinet Now if you had a drawer and it didn't have any knots in it But the other ones did then I wouldn't charge that additional charge for that door or drawer So while we're on the subject of filling holes I'll talk another about another scenario. We've run into several times where the customer wants to eliminate the Door knob holes. This doesn't have any door knobs are just open by grabbing the doors the door itself the top or the drawer front the bottom of it If the customer is eliminating door knobs or poles and or is changing location You're going to have to fill those holes and if you use just sparkle and sparkle it sand it You will be able to see where that that hole was what you need to do once again like a naughty all their you need to Spackle it and I use Crawfords. I don't use like a lightweight Spackle I use Crawfords interior exterior Spackle which is more of a heavy-duty Spackle and doesn't shrink as much. I'm going to fill the holes Then I'm going to put two coats of Bondo glazing putty on top of that Sand it check it in an inspection light and be very very critical because you don't want to do is Paint the door and see an indentation where that whole hole was So it does take spackle two coats of Bondo to eliminate it It is time consuming and I have a price for that and the price to do a whole set of kitchen cabinets is a flat fee of $250 So let me talk about another fee that I have an additional charge and that is Multi-colors. This is something that you don't run into very often But I have run into it where they want the bottom set of kitchen cabinets white and they want the top set of kitchen cabinets Gray or they want the kitchen cabinets white and on island gray and it doesn't sound like that big of a deal But it's loading and reloading colors and cleaning up and changing colors and ordering Two gallons instead of one gallon so you have a little bit left of You know two gallons instead of just one gallon so the paint there's going to be additional cost and paint You have to take that into consideration And I have an additional charge for multi-colored kitchen cabinets and that's $200 if you want more than one color in your kitchen Or wherever you're actually painting the cabinets. I mean when I keep referring to kitchens But it could be it could be a vanity it could be a laundry room There's it could be an entertainment center or a lot of different case scenarios, but where it's Most of this is really geared towards kitchen cabinets because that's the bulk of what we paint when it comes to cabinets So here's another Scenario you're going to run into and this is a door This is a recess panel door right here and it's got a gap and it has a floating panel right here and There's Most a couple different schools of thoughts. Should you cock them? Should you not cock them? I won't get into that if you want to know my opinion about cocking floating panel doors you can go check out my video That's part of this series of cocking floating panel doors and what's my opinion and can you have success doing it But I do have a price for doing Or cocking panel doors now. It's pretty rare that I would ever cock a recess panel door or floating panel door anymore There is some liability issues with it. So you got to determine your climate where you're at Does that panel truly float or as it locked in there and sealed You live in a moist climate a dry climate take all that stuff into consideration before you ever Start painting floating paneled or recess panel doors because if there's any movement and the type of coding you're putting it over the top I use water-based PUs which are more flexible than lacquers So they're less likely to crack around the cocking But what you don't want to do is Cock this door paint this door and have it crack and have to deal with that later on down the road due to expansion and contraction of the wood But if I'm cocking doors and Not drawers that you could have a recess panel drawer in some cases, but if I'm doing any type of cocking you know on these things I'm going to charge my fee is $10 per door or drawer So I have a method that I use when I'm cocking these things I use a tile sponge and it's a really tight Open cell sponge and I'll put a small bead of cocking on there the sponge is wet and I'll cock that thing get a really tight bead I'll smooth it out with a sponge and then you'll have a really nice bead on the cabinet doors now You know once again there is a school of thoughts some guys are just you just addily never cock these doors I'm not going to be cocking these doors I like the look of it without it Cocked, but there are situations where previously painted cabinets have paint bridging over the gaps And if you're painting them white it could look really ugly So are you going to be cocking them make sure you use the right cocking make sure you right use the right top coat Make sure you're in the right climate and then make sure you charge for it because It is additional work. It is a time-consuming to get it nice Knee and tight so once again I charge $10 per door or drawer And if there's any type of cocking that would be on the face frames or the side panels That would be included in the door or drawer front price So another little thing you'll run into occasionally and I do charge more for it And it's going to be a inserted glass door and you'll see doors like this instead of a panel It'll have glass so it can be used to display like china or stuff like that And every now and then you'll run into a kitchen that I have two of them on one of the boxes To be able to display stuff inside that box and those doors usually have You know something that run you run into that's an issue whether it's removing the glass or masking the glass and deal with it One time we had to remove the glass on them There was no way to paint around them But we couldn't remove the glass We needed to take it to a glass shop to remove it and have it reinstalled after we are done And so you definitely anytime you're dealing with glass Just the simple liability that you could break it is Something you know you need to add an additional charge to and if I have a door that has glass in it my Typical door price for a door is a hundred and fifteen dollars per door if there's glass in it I charge a hundred and forty five dollars per door and that's going to have that built-in liability What if I break the glass what if the glass has to be removed by a glass shop or just the time masking the glass And dealing with the glass paint bleeding onto the glass getting onto it So definitely have an additional charge for Glass inserted doors. There's one more thing that I have additional charge for now Occasionally on this isn't the greatest example But inside the boxes every now and then you're going to run into a customer that wants the inside painted most of the time The insides of them are white melamine and it's never a great idea to paint Melamine if you're painting the side which is some type of Melamine on the side you definitely want to prime it with something like XIM UMA as a great primer the inside of the boxes if they're melamine and they're adam that you paint them You really need to be primed with something proper like UMA primer But inside the boxes are not easy to spray there are tight spaces hard to get in there You're getting a lot of overspray kicking back at you And it's just not as easy as taking a cabinet door and spraying a cabinet door down or spraying it up Very simple. It's very controlled Inside the boxes getting 100% coverage not getting runs and just spraying it is not easy to do And once you've done one set you'll realize why you need to charge Additional money for the inside of boxes or cabinets So when it comes to the inside of the boxes I have another just built in or not built in an additional price It's $30 per door or drawer for Cad doing the inside of the boxes So if I got a door right here it's a $30 additional charge So I got a door and a drawer right here So it's going to be $60 and that's going to cover that area So if I'm doing this whole inside of this saying I'm going to count the doors and drawers right there at $30 for each That's what it's going to take to paint the inside of the box Now of course this thing has been ripped out pulled out It's easy to spray the inside of that so that's where the human element comes into play Well $30 might not you know be appropriate for that situation And so when it comes to the bidding process Once again, there's always this human element that needs to be taken into consideration You could have all these built-in charges or these additional charges I could have $115 per door, $95 for drawer And the bid comes out to $5,000 But I don't have any work for the next three months And I really got to pay my house payment The human element is going to tell me I need to lower my price you know Possibly to be competitive if you get the job Or you're booked out for three months And you know you've got too much work on your hands You really should be increasing your price Because maybe your price is too low You really should know your numbers where you're at Where you live Because one thing you don't want to do Is take $150 for $15 per door $95 for drawer And apply that say in California in LA Or Manhattan and New York Because you would be missing the boat by about 50% You know on what you're charging Because there's certain geographical locations Where the prices are going to be higher And then there are certain places where possibly the prices will be lower So you really have to understand where you're at And what the going rate for is And once you figure out the going rate You can adjust or not adjust from there If you have no idea what it is You can just start doing bids And you can if you're not getting the bids At all, maybe you're too high If you're getting every single bid You're putting out there Then you may be too low So you just got to really understand You know the numbers are throwing out there And are they appropriate or not appropriate Are they you know Within the price range that they should be Where you live or where you don't live All right, so I'm going to go over Our doors and drawers right here We've got I counted up We've got 17 doors We've got 19 drawer front right here And if I do the math 95 and 115 That comes up to $3,800 Now do I have any situations or scenarios Where I'm going to do any additionals and add-ons We do have a large panel on the opposite side Of the fridge or there We do have a large panel on the end of the count right here We do have some panels You know on the end of here But I don't consider those large panels I just consider these part…