cost to have topside painted

[Ben Thomas]

Several years ago after doing some deck repairs (wet Balsa) where the chalking failed along coaming board screws and the entire cockpit Balsa was soaked from the binnacle and emer. tiller cap chalking failing. It was evident I would have to re-do the topsides and nonskid.
At this point I removed all hardware from the decks, drilled and filled with epoxy and redrilled correct size.
There was a lot of crazing on the decks, I sanded all the non-skid off and used a dremel (tedious) and routed all of them out and filled and faired with epoxy.
After 7 years a few are creeping back. If I was to do it over again (no chance) I would peel down to the balsa and start over.
Since I did most of the grunt work myself the cost of topsides/non-skid and hull in Awlgrip was about $9500.00.




Hopefully these jpegs are not to big. not sure how to make them smaller.
Lots of hard work but well worth the effort.

[Cathy Monaghan]

Cathy,

....I have stripped a fair number of boats of deck gear, hatches, ports etc. and @ $75.00 per hour they are claiming 6.6 40 hour work weeks or 266 man hours of work. ....

Hi Main Sail,

The labor rate hasn't been $75 an hour here in NJ for awhile. It's not less than $90 per hour, but I agree that they've over estimated the manhours involved to remove the hardware. That said, back in 2004 it took me all day, and I mean all day, to remove the steering pedestal. I don't know what it was bedded with but it finally took a super thin spackle knife and a sledge hammer to break it free.

For this job Bruce and I would have removed and reinstalled the hardware, so we wouldn't have had to pay for that at least. Anyway, I got the feeling that they really didn't want the job from the beginning. But I have had them do work for me in the past and they have always done an excellent job and I've always walked, or sailed, away happy. They've even done some stuff for me for free.

Cathy
CD32 Realization, #3
Rahway, NJ
Raritan Bay

[Ron M.]

It is quite obvious that they are very busy or don't care if they get the job.
If someone bites on a ridiculous bid like Cathy received they chalk it up as a big profit. It happens frequently with contracting : Get 4 or 5 bids on a 5k roof job, most will come in within 10/15% up or down. There is usually the one that bids twice as much, not caring if he gets it.....but will be happy to do it for his huge markup. Not a good way to do business and promote goodwill.
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