APRIL JLC 1999
Twenty-five years ago, when I estimated
my first whole house, I did it
the old-fashioned way — with pencil
and paper. Since this was my first big
project, I double-checked the takeoff
totals to make sure I hadn't missed anything.
Just when I thought I was finished,
I discovered that I hadn't added
sales tax to the materials prices. At 5%
on $30,000, I had almost short-changed
myself by $1,500.
I eventually solved the sales tax problem
by investing in estimating software
that added the tax in automatically. But
the near-miss got me thinking about the
rest of the takeoff, where I could just as
easily have forgotten to price some crucial
item. From that