The most accurate renovation estimate is a lie. It is a lie because it lists the cost of the boards and the cost of the labor but it leaves out the cost of the Saturdays. People look at the bottom line of a quote and they think they know what the project costs. They do not. They only know what the project costs to start. They do not know what the project costs to own.

The husband sits at the kitchen table. He has a paper in his hand. The paper is the estimate. The husband is happy. He likes the number at the bottom. The number is $18,460. He says the number out loud. He says the number is fair. He thinks the renovation is a good deal. He thinks the house will look new. He thinks the wood is beautiful.

Beyond the Kitchen Table

The wife is not looking at the number. The wife is looking at the material list. The list says Western Red Cedar. The wife remembers the old house. The old house had wood. The old house was in 2014. The wife remembers the man on the ladder. She remembers the smell of the primer. She remembers the husband was tired. She remembers the husband was angry on those Saturdays.

She asks the husband what the house costs after the check is paid. The husband has no answer. He points to the number on the paper. He does not see the cost she is talking about.

I am like the wife. I am Sage J. I negotiate labor contracts. I spend my days in rooms with people who want to talk about the hourly rate. The hourly rate is simple. The hourly rate is easy to put on a spreadsheet. But a good contract is not about the hourly rate. A good contract is about the “tail.”

Understanding the Liability

The tail is the liability that comes later. The tail is the healthcare and the pension and the safety rules. If you ignore the tail, you are a bad negotiator. You will lose the deal in the third year.

I broke my favorite mug this morning. The mug was blue. It had a small chip on the rim. I dropped the mug on the floor. Now the mug is in the trash. The mug was a gift. It was a simple object. But I had to wash it by hand. I had to be careful with the chip. The mug had a maintenance cost. Now that the mug is gone, I have more time. I do not have to wash the mug. I do not have to worry about the chip. This is how I think about houses.

A house is a contract. You sign the contract when you buy the material. If you buy wood, you sign a contract for maintenance. The maintenance is the tail. The tail is long. The tail is heavy.

The Anatomy of a Wood Maintenance Cycle

Traditional wood siding requires a process. The process is a sequence of steps. Each one is a withdrawal from your life’s bank account:

This process takes forty-two hours for a standard house. Forty-two hours is three weekends in June. June is a summer month. A man has a limited number of summers. If the man is forty years old, he might have thirty summers left. If he spends three weekends every five years on a ladder, he is giving away his life to the wall. The estimate does not list those hours. The estimate does not price the exhaustion.

“The husband at the table does not know about the tail. He only knows about the eighteen thousand dollars. He thinks the wood is a one-time payment. He is wrong.”

The Alternative: Shortening the Tail

Slat Solution is a company in San Diego. They sell

Shiplap Composite Siding

for outdoor walls. The material is different. The material is Wood-Plastic Composite. It is called WPC. It is a mix of wood fibers and plastic.

When you use composite, the tail is short. There is almost no tail. You put the boards on the wall. The boards stay on the wall. The color does not fade in the sun. The rain does not soak into the board. In San Diego, the air has salt. The salt eats the wood. The salt does not eat the composite. In the hills, there is fire. Wood burns. Composite resists the fire. These are the things the estimate should mention.

The Cost of Cheap Decisions

I told a guy last week about the tail. He was a contractor. He wanted the cheapest wood. He said the client wanted to save money. I asked him about the callbacks. A callback is when the client calls the contractor because the wood warped. A callback is a cost. The contractor does not get paid for a callback. The contractor loses money on the callback. The contractor is a bad negotiator. He ignored the tail.

If you buy a material that lasts, you are buying your time. You are buying your Saturdays. You are buying the peace of the wife. The wife at the kitchen table knows this. She is not being difficult. She is being a realist. She knows that a cheap estimate is a trap. She knows that the husband will be on the ladder in five years.

The Calculation of Time

The husband looks at the wife. He sees her face. She is not smiling. He asks her what is wrong. She tells him about the ladder. She tells him about the summer of 2014. She tells him she does not want to watch him paint the house again. She wants to go to the lake. She wants him to be there with her.

The husband calculates the cost of the paint. He calculates the cost of the brushes. He calculates the cost of his own time. He decides his time is worth fifty dollars an hour. Forty-two hours is two thousand dollars. He adds that to the estimate. He adds it every five years for twenty years. The wood is now very expensive. The wood is more expensive than the composite.

The math changes when you include the tail. This is the secret of the union negotiator. You must look at the whole life of the contract. You must look at the whole life of the house.

Master of the Saturday

The husband calls the contractor. He says he does not want the cedar. He says he wants the composite. He says he wants the shiplap look but he does not want the shiplap work. The contractor argues. The contractor says wood is traditional. The husband says he is not a traditional man. He is a man who wants to go to the lake. He is a man who has thirty summers left.

When the boards arrive, they are heavy. They are solid. They have the texture of real timber. The husband touches the surface. He knows he will never have to sand this surface. He knows he will never have to prime this surface. He puts the ladder in the garage. He leaves it there. He goes inside. He makes a cup of coffee. He sits with his wife.

San Diego has a showroom. You can go there. You can touch the boards. You can see the colors. You can talk to the people who know the technical details. They will tell you about the moisture resistance. They will tell you about the insect resistance. They will not tell you about the Saturdays because they know you already have plans for those. They know you want to buy the material once.

The real work was over before it started.