3 days & 3 nights

Well there's a reason why I hate commercial work and after an estimate of $ 4500 for a 12,000 sq ft carpets and 600 sq ft hardwood floors and a couple hundreds sq ft of linoleums, they asked if I can match a competitor's rate of almost $ 3300 and I think I was thinking about having mai tai on maui beach when I said yes to that, lol.
So the hell starts tonight, estimate of completion 3 nights of 6 - 8 hours / night, I still have to work the day shifts to cover my tech that I put for that night shift, if I can get 12 hours of sleep or a little more between tonight and wednesday, I'm considering myself lucky and blessed, wish me luck.
If I can find a water faucet down in the garage, I can probably cheat a little by getting it done with my truckmount, that might cut it down to 2 nights instead of 3 nights.
The wood floors is buff and re finish job, it's been a while since I did hardwood floors job, how long do you think it's going to take me and a tech to finish that ?

your going to make a shoot load of money in a short time and your bitching?

Oh that brings back some memories.....and not necessarily good ones either.    So I know what you're talking about, as I've had a couple like that before.

The last one just a year ago, similar in area, but just all carpet. It was scheduled over 3 nights and had to be completed on the last night to met an important deadline. By the last night on the job, and after unexpected delays, we still had a lot of work to do to met the mandatory deadline (and of course, these jobs always seem to come along when you're busy as hell with day work too, at least for me). So on that last day/night, after working all day, we show up at 6pm to finish, hour after hour ticked by, and then finally about 5am Finished!.....It was surreal, as I went out to my van to load up the equip and the sun was coming up, I had been working almost 24 hrs straight!   

This kinda hell was much easier when I was in my 20's, but now mid 40's it just about killed me!!   And it took me about 3 days to recover and get back to feeling normal again.

The good part about this one last year, was I didn't have to discount my price, and when you get that 4k check it seems to somehow make you forget about the hell it was earning it!   

Let me know if I can help you out in someway, DP.   
I have the Zipper now, just used it for the first time yesterday on a residential job, but I could tell commercial it's where it's really going to shine.
Although I'm not sure how much help I would be, as I'm really busy with day work right now, and wouldn't survive that staying up all night crap!   

ODIN wrote:your going to make a shoot load of money in a short time and your bitching?

No sir, bitchin' is NOT my job, that's yours and all republicants every single time Obama even move a finger   

I simply am sharing and STATING that I hate commercial job, bitchin' about it would be whining over and over of how the job suck @$$, etc, see the difference ?   

Davey Cracker wrote:Oh that brings back some memories.....and not necessarily good ones either.     So I know what you're talking about, as I've had a couple like that before.

The last one just a year ago, similar in area, but just all carpet. It was scheduled over 3 nights and had to be completed on the last night to met an important deadline. By the last night on the job, and after unexpected delays, we still had a lot of work to do to met the mandatory deadline (and of course, these jobs always seem to come along when you're busy as hell with day work too, at least for me).  So on that last day/night, after working all day, we show up at 6pm to finish, hour after hour ticked by, and then finally about 5am Finished!.....It was surreal, as I went out to my van to load up the equip and the sun was coming up, I had been working almost 24 hrs straight!   

This kinda hell was much easier when I was in my 20's, but now mid 40's it just about killed me!!   And it took me about 3 days to recover and get back to feeling normal again.

The good part about this one last year, was I didn't have to discount my price, and when you get that 4k check it seems to somehow make you forget about the hell it was earning it!   

Let me know if I can help you out in someway, DP.   
I have the Zipper now, just used it for the first time yesterday on a residential job, but I could tell commercial it's where it's really going to shine.
Although I'm not sure how much help I would be, as I'm really busy with day work right now, and wouldn't survive that staying up all night crap!   

Thank you for the thoughts sir, sometimes just a nice thought and offers to help goes a long way to make someone feel better and energized, and yes everything you said pretty much sums it up, they always come when you're busy as hell, the problem with this one is the painter is coming in on tuesday night, I hate working in the middle of another contractors, hopefully we'll knock them down in 2 nights, we'll see.
I lost interest on the zipper a while back, don't like dealing with someone that doesn't stand behind their product and pick and choose which questions potential customers have to answer, I can keep going on and on but I'm going to get ready for this job, see y'all in 3 days, be good y'all.

Knock em out killer!

dp1 wrote:.........................I lost interest on the zipper a while back, don't like dealing with someone that doesn't stand behind their product and pick and choose which questions potential customers have to answer, I can keep going on and on but I'm going to get ready for this job, see y'all in 3 days, be good y'all.

I couldn't agree more.

But if it's a tool that makes cleaning easier and/or faster for me, at my old age lol then I'm interested in at least checking it out, w4hich is what I'm doing now.....but I can't say I'm in a hurry to drop 2k on it, guess will see....I should know if it's for me or not in a week or so, because I have a good Variety of jobs this coming week to test it out on.

May the force be with you, DP!!......If I can help out anymore, questions or whatever let me know!!   

depending on your process - three to four hours on the floor with one coat of urethane, five to six hours with two coats - includes two hour dry time between coats.

I feel your pain, just finished 10k sqft of commercial about 3 hours ago and have started my 13 hour day job after a brief nap. The secret is avoid caffeine and keep moving. Let your body provide the adrenaline and don't eat a large meal. It works, do it every week.

As for the job, your original price is close to my market, but commercial always tries to make you get cheaper. The good part is that you are working steady so you make a good deal of money without gaps.

I am a little slow on wood floors, so it would take me about 10 hours including dry times. I would expect that you are looking at 22 hours on this job....pretty taxing on the body.

Think of it as a competition, attack it and show the kids how it is done! Good Luck.

Well boys, the job was done early this morning ( 1 am ), I've put 8 hours in the first night with only 1 tech working 5 hours, second night 1 tech 5 hours, 1 tech and myself 7 hours each, so total time spent 15 hours, the carpets actually more like 14,000 sq ft and the total is closer to $ 3500  
Regarding the wood floors, been 5 years since I used a 175, so I'm embarassed to say that I could not operate the darn thing, it kept going to the left, not sure if it's too much hp or I'm just really rusty, to avoid damage to the floors, we ended up scrubbing the floors with maroon pad manually ( mop stick and pad ), the overall condition is not bad at all, so we put about 3 hours total on the wood floors with 2 coats, an hour between each coat, seems like the floors absorbing the finish really quick. Btw I'm using powr flite black max buffing machine and one more thing that's weird was the maroon pads kept slipping out of the white cushion pad, anyone has an idea why ?
I know my old 175 that I no longer own has 0.5 hp and this one is 1.5 hp, is it too much power for wood floors ?
Well, in 2 days and 2 nights I've worked approximately 36 - 37 hours and slept 10 hours total, I'm tired but not exactly exhausted, Rob is right, even though I didn't see his response until now, I've been eating smaller portion and drinks lots of water.
Thanks guys for all of the responses :-)

Awesome!!!!!

That's a great feeling. I do this stuff every month. When it's behind me I feel like I'm wearing a cape.

Outstanding job, knew you would come out smiling!

really rusty....left is what it does normally, and you weren't "lifting" enough to make it go right....

though the trick is to make it "float"

DP, great job.

Thank you Gerry :-)