text: Second question - how long does it take you to distress an average sized cabinet door, let抯 say 15x24"? How long would it take to glaze said door? This particular job I am working on is a fairly heavily distressed rustic maple job, my schedule and time for each procedure is as follows:
  4. Sand coat ?four minutes.
  6. Apply and wipe back general finishes Vandyke brown glaze to front side of door ?five minutes.
  7. Sand glaze for looks ?three minutes.
  8. Vacuum door ?one minute.
  9. Spray front side of door with one last coat of precat urethane ?one minute.
  I suppose you must come up with your schedule in order for pricing. I set my price by the cabinet box. Generally it抯 two hours for an average base cabinet with a door and drawer front. Some bigger cabinets might be double that. Those times are for a stain, seal, tone, and topcoat. For distressing and glaze it抯 likely three hours. If it is a painted distressed rub through glaze job that would be four hours. Lastly not glazing the backs of doors is really bad.
  I understand your need to figure out your "exact time" on your jobs, however looking too closely at things will cause you to watch the clock while working. Let抯 say you have ten doors to glaze. Your schedule allows for 50 minutes to glaze all the doors. Let抯 say these doors take you 90 minutess instead. Are you now aware of the time loss? Are you then pushing through the remaining doors and sacrificing quality? Or are you going through the last steps of your schedule trying to figure out where you can get those 40 minutes back?
  I understand that solvent finishes are still ahead of WB抯 in terms of look/performance, but using WBs in my area has been beneficial for many reasons so I will be sticking with it. Believe it or not I am considered to be one of the highest end finishers in my area, and one of the more expensive. Finishing is a deeply flooded market out here in California, and if I don抰 stay competitive I will end up risking having to close my doors as many other good shops out here have done over the last few years. I would love to be able to charge more for my work, but my local market won抰 support it. Either that or I haven抰 tapped into it yet.