In fact, hardwood floor installation is heavy physical work, but it allows you to earn good money. And yet, is it possible to increase the salary of the floor installer?
There are several ways to increase revenue from hardwood floor installation. First, it depends on how long you have worked as a floor installer. It’s no secret that beginners get paid after having worked a certain number of hours. Usually they are paid 10-12 dollars per hour, although it depends not only on the country in which they live, but also the city and even who their boss is. Therefore, in the future I will not name any specific figures.
So, to increase his salary, a newbie floor installer needs to find his own contractor or customers to hire him to install the floor and get paid not by the hour for his completed work, but for the entire project. Every part of the job in hardwood floor installation has a price, and it is much higher than what you were paid as a student.
To achieve this, a beginner has to work as an apprentice as he does not have the level of experience and knowledge of the person or persons with whom he worked.
How else can you increase the value of your hardwood floor installation? By only working with customers directly, without intermediaries! Thus, the entire salary of the mediators will be in your pocket. You can work directly with clients from time to time or permanently. Everything will depend on your ability to manage your time, along with your skills in negotiating with people.
Many floor installers do not like to seek customers, as this takes time. They prefer to spend their time on the hardwood floor installation for the contractor or for his own personal life.
For those who have been engaged in installation for just a few years, I have another way to increase their salaries, but for this I will share with you my own observations.
Once, while working for one of the contractors, I spoke with one of my colleagues on the topic of work and wages. As it turned out, in the previous month, we both worked a different number of hours per day. He worked only 5-6 hours, I worked 8 hours. Why did he work less hours, you ask? Concerning how many days and hours you need to work, making hardwood floor installation, I’ll share with you in one of the other posts.
Let me continue the story… When we compared the rates for certain types of work, they were the same. We also were both fully loaded with work in the previous month, but worked different amounts of weekdays and weekends. He worked for 22 working days, I – almost without weekends. When we compared the amount of money earned in the past month, the difference simply stunned me. My salary was one-third less than the salary of my colleague!
I was mentally destroyed and made a last attempt to find out where such injustice came from. I asked a colleague from the same projects my colleague worked for during the last month, and a new wave of indignation stirred within me. He did exactly half of the projects than I worked!
Why, when I charged the identical price as he did for the job, but I ended up working longer hours and receiving less pay? I asked this question to myself for a few days. Only after some time, I found the answer. It happened when I got my very first big project on which I worked the entire month.
The fact is that the loading and unloading of tools with which you work with takes a certain amount of time and nobody will pay for it! That’s why floor installers usually leave all their tools on the job site from start to finish, if it is safe.
With this new approach of loading and unloading my tools, I have saved a lot of extra time, which I spend with my family, receiving great pleasure. I go to work later and return almost an hour earlier. But what is greater is the increase to my salary; it is the size and shape of the rooms that I install. There are more open areas, where speed of installation is always higher.
Outcome:
When you do the hardwood floor installation within a small timeframe, there are always the little things that will take a lot of time, but time is money! Enhance your professionalism and be worthy of large objectives and high wages.