Valuing Your Work

Hey! I thought we were supposed to be in the middle of hard times. You know, folks not havin the money to spend, etc, etc. This is Friday, and I got up this morning with every intention of doing some wood carving, even experimenting with some crazy quilting ideas. That is, until the telephone started ringing. The telephone calls were all jobs that a shop needed to have done. One was a wall of shelves, that could be used all together or seperately. A total of 21 shelves in the complete unit. The other job involves making two floor display cases, to display jewerly (Pandora). These would be large units with a glass top. Now, being who I am; I hate to turn down work. So I drew up the plans, worked up the bill of materials. Determined how much time it would take me to purchase the materials and build the units. Priced everything, and totaled it up. Next, I recalled my previous post about pricing ones work. Then I carefully considered the following:

A. Did I really want to do these jobs.
B. Did I need to do these jobs.
C. I usually under estimate the time it takes to build and finish things.
D. I usually under value my work.

After careful consideration, I determined that I did NOT need to do the work, added lots more time to do the work, determined that I was worth lots more money than I usually charged.

Went to the calculator, and punched in the numbers. Yikes! that's a lot of money. Now normally I would start whittlin away at the price. But not this time. I took the quote to the shop and showed it to them. It was my hope that they would change their minds....But no! they said FINE, get started. For the past fifeteen years this same shop has said the same thing when I gave them much lower charges.

So! take notice folks. Do not under value your work. If it's good quality work it's worth the price you put on it, and folks will step up and pay.....