So i have a lady staying in my guesthouse for a bit (no firm move out date, she's trying to get her life together a bit), and today she asked if i'd be interested in helping her make some of her ideas come to fruition, by fleshing out her designs, making the item(s), and then having her sell it and i'd get a cut of the deal. sure, we can talk, i told her.

looking at google a moment ago, i found a very similar dining table and benches for sale, offered for a total of $7300 (not as cool looking as mine, but close enough), which works out to about 11x my material cost for that project.

my advice to her, and anyone else, is to first sell the item, then build it. otherwise, you end up with a shop full of stuff you can't use and can't sell. once you sell it, collect 50% of the total cost up front, non-refundable. make it, deliver it (extra charge for that too, my gas isn't free), and collect the rest of the money. i'd propose we split the cost 50-50. so if a buyer bails, i've paid for the materials and then just have to figure out what to do with the item.

and no, i don't do rush projects, that table and benches i made took about 10 weeks total. don't know how many hours i had into it, i'd guess 70-100 hours over the course of that time period. on a busy day, i'll spend 2-3 hours in my shop, other days, zero to 1 (like finish days or glue up days, you have to let things cure before the next step.).

stay tuned.

Edited 2 hours ago2 hr by DAB
spelling.

Sounds like a pretty good paln to me. Hope it works out that way.