Estimating and pricing the work

Build the estimate from the bottom

An estimate is not a number you feel. It is a stack you build, line by line, and every line has a source.

Labor comes first: break the project into tasks, estimate hours per task, and multiply by your rate. Parts come second, at real quotes, not guesses, with shipping included, marked up around 25 percent when you source and stand behind them, which is standard shop practice. Subcontract lines come third: paint, machine work, upholstery, quoted by the shops that will do them. Overhead comes fourth: insurance, consumables, tool depreciation, the garage share. Contingency comes last, at 10 to 20 percent, because the teardown in A real week in the garage found filler under a crossmember and yours will too.

Then track actual hours against the estimate on every job, forever. Your first estimates will embarrass you. The tracking is what turns a hobbyist's optimism into a professional's database, and within five projects your gut and your spreadsheet start agreeing.

Setting your rate

Research what restoration and quality repair shops in your region charge, by asking, by reading shop sites, and by getting a quote as a customer. As the new shop in town, enter slightly below the established rate you found, enough to win first work on value, not enough to signal cheap. Cheap attracts the worst clients in this trade: the ones who want a concours car for patch-panel money.

Raise your rate when the portfolio says so, not when the calendar does. Every finished, photographed, referenceable project is an argument for a higher rate. The shops at $85 to $300 an hour all started somewhere, and the visible work is what moved them up the range.

The phase estimate

Put the estimate in phases, not as one number, with a not-to-exceed range per phase and a checkpoint before each new phase begins. This format does three things at once. It lets surprises found during teardown get absorbed into a revised phase instead of a blown total. It gives the client decision points they can actually act on. And it converts the scary conversation, "it costs more than we thought," into a routine one, "phase two came in at the top of the range, here is why, sign here for phase three."

Presenting the number

Deliver estimates in writing, broken down by phase, with the contingency visible and your hours stated. Transparency here is how a two-person shop out-competes a bigger one. Walk the client through it in person or on a call.

"The full scope is phased. Phase one is teardown and assessment, and it's a not-to-exceed of eighteen hundred dollars. At the end of phase one you get a photo record, a findings list, and revised numbers for every remaining phase, and you decide what continues. Nothing beyond phase one is committed today."

That framing closes work that a single grand total would scare off, because it prices the uncertainty honestly instead of pretending it away.

An estimate this honest still needs a payment structure behind it, deposits that protect you and milestones that reassure the client. That structure is where the course goes next.