What should we pay?

A friend is over helping us do some work on the house and he's going to not charge us but he'll accept whatever we feel OK to pay but we have NO idea what we should pay. What do you think is appropriate?

He will be spackling our kitchen (it's a kitchen that's about 11' x 18', spackling only about 1/2 of it because the rest is cabinets). The walls were wallpaper and we removed the paper but the walls have some tears in the sheetrock and it just needs a skim coat across the walls to smooth them out so we can paint. Then he'll be removing a lighting fixture and replacing it with 4 recessed lighting fixtures (having to go into the attic) and doing the appropriate electric for it). It should take two or three days to do the work.

So, any ideas?? He won't give us a quote!!

 

OK - He got here about 8:30 this morning and stayed until 5pm. That's a LONG day!! Tomorrow he'll be here at 7:30 (WAY too early for me but I know he's an early bird so I'll get up).

I'm definitely thinking in the $300 range.....

 

That wouldn't have paid for the gas and tolls to get to Long Island!!

 

Yep, he's done this stuff LOTS.

Day one was removing all the trim, talking things over with hubby, getting stuff set-up, going through the materials hubby bought then skim coating the whole kitchen and caulking a LOT of areas that needed it. He also removed two speakers from the ceiling and patched/spackled those areas.

Today he came back and worked about 6 hours. 2 coats of skim coat with sanding in between (well, he sanded, skim coated, sanded then skim coated again). It's a kitchen with a lot of nooks that are tougher to get and it's a kitchen with old walls so it's not new construction but patching lots of old stuff so that's why we're needing skim coats. He's having to go over some areas a number of times to get the walls to look good so we can paint.

Tomorrow he will come back and install 4 high hats after removing the old fluorescent lighting fixture that we have up there and there are a couple of spots that need some touch up with the spackle. Hubby will prime the kitchen tomorrow night so then he can come back on Thursday and check the walls to see how they look and if there are any other places that need touching up. If it's all good, we're done.

So now we're at 4 days of him working. I'm going to bump up the price at this point. The kitchen is looking AMAZING although all the cabinet doors are off right now so he can get as close as he can to the top of the cabinets. Oh - and he's going to help trim out the top of the cabinets as well when that time comes. It's SOOOO nice to see this getting done. Now to figure out a color for the kitchen!

 

Yep - skim coating the WHOLE wall!! LOL It's a big job.

 

Gorgeous!!!!

 

Here are pics of the kitchen with the wallpaper up. This was from about 6 years ago and the paper had started peeling so we took it all off. The walls were a mess under there so that's what we had to work with. You can see at the top of the cabinets, they don't meet the ceiling so we will be putting moulding up there to finish it and we'll put hardware on the cabinets as well.

http://www.seekone.com/ann/house/IMG_4467.JPG

http://www.seekone.com/ann/house/IMG_4468.JPG

http://www.seekone.com/ann/house/IMG_4469.JPG
(the little one in this picture is my now 9 year old! LOL)

http://www.seekone.com/ann/house/IMG_4470.JPG
(the things on the wall have long since changed but it still gives the general idea....)

 

Taking it down was easy - remember that it was already peeling. It was getting all the backing down that took some time but DIF really helped. It took us all a day to do it.

I know. It's just an inch and the cabinet doors go right up there too. Tom will help us figure out a solution. We couldn't go all the way to the ceiling because the ceiling was too uneven so we figured we'd make it even from the floor. But that left this dilemma.

Exactly. I'll be happy to see the end of that light. We called in this friend because he's a commercial electrician so figured he'd do the lighting but he said he'd do the whole job. I like a man like that! LOL

Tell me about it. I need to figure out the color and the hardware. I'm working on the color now and will figure out hardware after our vacation. We MAY be able to pain this weekend but I'm not sure. I don't want to rush it but if the cabinet doors are all off, it may be best to get to the painting now.....