House flippers screwed me. So I asked pros to quote on a fix.
The lowest quote for simply replacing a showerpan and a glass box that sits on it is $9k. Yikes. WTF is going on here? Other quotes have hit $16k. I’ve seen in the hardware store shower box kits that are like $700. So I am really baffled here. Those kits should be like 1 or 2 ppl working for 1 day, no?
Clearly I am out of touch. So my next thought is, if I am going to spend that kind of serious money, I might as well do a luxury bath extension to the house.
For complex reasons I am looking to avoid doing the work myself, but that idea is not completely off the table. I am thinking if I do the project myself, concrete bags are cheap. Wedi boards and the like come in showerpan kits IIRC, which are not exactly cheap but compared to the quotes by contractors the Wedi board seems quite reasonable. I’ve seen the various videos of YTers discussing in detail how to do it right and how others screw up. Are the crazy quotes from contractors mainly due to labor costs?
As the other poster noted, they are quoting you for a lot of maybes.
But also, a big part of the price is simply supply and demand. There is a shortage of experienced, skilled laborers, and it isn’t going away anytime soon. If you are dealing with an independent contractor, for example, your price needs to not only compete against other potential projects in terms of time/effort, but also must compete against the alternative of “what if I just fucked off and hung out with my friends instead?” The beauty of having experience in skilled labor (right now at least) is that your skills are in short supply, but are largely interchangeable with anyone else with the same skills. So if you were to get fired - or just quit because you don’t feel like working - there is no hurry to find another job. You know you can find another job almost instantly. Which is why I know several contractors who just work summers, and then fuck off and go rock climbing the rest of the year.