What would you quote this project?

[splinna]

I think one of the great pieces of advice running through this thread, whatever you decide, is to start keeping a log of the hours you spend on each project, broken down in categories that are meaningful to you. This is going to help you see how much time you are actually spending on projects and gives you a couple useful insights:

1) you likely will see times decrease as your skills improve and/or the equipment in your shop improves

2) might help you decide where to make improvements in your shop or skills first (are you spending too much of your time sanding large panels flat with a 4 inch palm sander?)

3) give you a reality check on time you are spending vs. what it ought to have taken. which may factor into your pricing model. For example, on one of my last projects I had tapered legs for some end tables. once I had the stock glued up for the blanks it should have only taken me about 30 minutes to set up the cut, double check everything, mark it up and cut the eight legs... but, I thought about it for a while and figured the best way was to have a better taper jig, and it should be adjustable, and it should do this, and it should do that, etc... 3 hours later I had a heck of a nice new "tool" built for the shop, plus 8 legs. So it took me about 4 hours to cut those legs, but I would never charge for 4 hours, maybe one tops, and next time, .5

So long story short, keep track of the time you spend on your projects. You wouldn't build your projects without measuring before you cut, don't price them without at least having an idea how many hours you have into it, so you can make an informed decision when you start jiggering with the numbers to make the customer happy.

[Beechwood Chip]

+1 on keeping track of your hours. Here's a post I did a while back on estimating how long a job would take.