Costed material lists
Adhesive, levelling compound, wastage on diagonal cuts, screws per square metre of decking. Quantities in rand so you can check your own quote against a real one before you send it.
This page is for the person holding the quote book and the drill at the same time: a tiler in Midrand, a foreman running a small crew in Durban, a cabinetmaker with two staff and a bakkie that does 400 km a week. The posts here are written from jobs that were quoted, built and paid for, not from a supplier catalogue.
If you want the longer breakdowns behind these points, start with the tiling quote walkthrough and the winter drill teardown.
Pricing a tiling job without undercutting yourself and how we structure the field notes
Adhesive, levelling compound, cutting waste and travel time get their own lines. You see where a tight quote breaks before the client signs, not after the screed turns out to be uneven.
Batteries left overnight in an unheated bakkie, chucks full of grit, brushes worn down by roof sheet fixing. You get the failure points and what the repair actually cost.
Rising damp, a leaking downpipe and a bridged damp course look similar on a painted wall. Simple moisture readings and a hose test tell you which repair you are actually doing.
How to check an aluminium supplier's lead times and tolerances, and what to ask before you commit a client's kitchen or shopfront to a delivery date.
Bakkie loading, axle weight and what a traffic stop on the N3 costs you in time. Practical limits for tiles, cement bags and timber, worked out before you leave the yard.
Invoice wording, deposit terms and the follow-up sequence that works on small residential jobs. Plus when to stop work on a site that has gone quiet.
Written for people who quote jobs on Monday and stand on site by Wednesday. Every entry is built from work that actually happened, not theory pulled off a supplier brochure.
Adhesive, levelling compound, wastage on diagonal cuts, screws per square metre of decking. Quantities in rand so you can check your own quote against a real one before you send it.
Drills, grinders and nailers opened up after a season of site work. Chuck wear, gearbox grit, battery behaviour in a cold bakkie, and what the repair actually cost.
Damp on plastered walls, bridged damp courses, cracked screeds. The order of work matters more than the product label, so we walk through it step by step.
How to tell a reputable aluminium or timber supplier from one that disappears after the deposit. Delivery windows, cutting tolerances, and what to put in writing.
Invoicing clients who stall, keeping a bakkie load legal on the N3, and the deposit terms that keep a small workshop from funding someone else's build.
Electricians, plumbers and cabinetmakers send in the jobs that went sideways. We publish the fix, the mistake, and what we would do differently next time.
Start with the Midrand tiling quote / See how we work with workshops