Salary For Self Employed Carpenter

[Louise07]

hi my hubby is contemplating becoming self employed. he is a fully qualified carpenter with 15 years experience. what could he expect to earn. he has an idea of what kind of prices he would charge but not sure if too high / low. we live in east anglia if this makes any difference. thanks

[bednobs]

for a professional service, i would be expecting to earn £100 pd

[tamborine]

this might help & they're looking for tradesmen to sign up

http://www.servicemagic.co.uk/tips-and-advice/how-much-does-kitchen-fitting-cost.html

[ummmm]

Depends what he's doing. He needs to sort out a daily rate and an hourly rate. Doing 1st fix and 2nd fix on site is not the same as going round someones house to hang a few doors.

[ummmm]

Tambo - that's a kitchen fitting site. Carpenters do more than fit kitchens.

[craft1948]

I pay my builder/decorator £100 per day...............

[Iluvspikey]

It's not just a case of 'how much should he pay himself', he needs to write a proper business plan, write down all the stuff he needs for work including transport, tools and materials, etc then all your out goings, utility bills food, rent/mortgage, premises or where would he keep his eqipment, phones bills, advertising, credit card bills, insurance, his National Insurance stamp and tax and then start to think about what a job costs. He'll probably need a course on accounting. Ask at the job centre if there are any courses about starting your own business and if there are any grants. You never plan to fail, but if you do it's bacause you failed to plan - that's what was drilled into me many moons ago. Hope he does it, good luck XX

[DJHawkes]

It would be a very very bad idea to start now, the trade is really having a hard time, tell him to actually look at the jobs advertised in the job centre for self employed joiners and he'll see he's be looking at £10 - £12 ph at the most. He'd possibly manage for a while but it would be tough, if he's cards in tell him to stick with it

[DJHawkes]

My OH struggled through 2010/11 after being a joinery contractor for 10 years, he eventually paid alot of money to get his CSCS managers and supervisors certificate and has managed to get great contracts as site manager since, with 35-38K but it's 7 days a week and long days at that. he'll not go back the SE joinery now as the industry won;t pay for craftsman or even tradesmen just for general skills, which isnlt specialised but is cheap

[DJHawkes]

*sorry i meant 30 years (watching CBB)

[tamborine]

Its just to give an idea of prices as asked by OP

[ummmm]

The bloke who fitted my kitchen was a kitchen fitter, not a carpenter.

[tamborine]

Mine was a carpenter with hand made cabinets @ £8k

[boxtops]

Is there the work in your area for a self-employed carpenter, louise?

[buildersmate]

Although no-one above has spelled it out, there are two distinctly different markets here.

One is the SE carpenter who works on building contracts and who gets paid via the CSCS system. This is the one where organisations won't pay well for the skills and there are loads of tradesmen from abroad working in the Uk on the act.

The second is going out and getting work from private houseowners who want minor jobs done of between one and a few days in length. This is better paid (around here, anyway) but less continuous and requires selling oneself and small ads in the local press whilst building a local reputation. It also requires pricing the job, not pricing a day (in most cases). One might also getting work from small General Builders who project manage small extensions for home-owners and need 1st and 2nd fix carpentry. Less well-paid at perhaps £100 per day.

[Louise07]

hi everyone, hubbyis looking at doing jobs for home owners. we are going to distribute some advertising cards and he has signed up to rated people. co.uk there are lots of prospective jobs on there. the problem at the moment is he has worked for many years for accarpentry company on the books doing site work and large projects but the site work is very slow and hubby is having to have lots of days off with no pay so we are thinkingbwhat has he got to lose by attempting to work for himself. thanks guys