Consulting

Hire the judgment, not just the crew.

Twenty-three years of finishing rooms teaches you what a drawing will actually cost, where a substrate will move, and which specification will come back as a change order. Increasingly, people hire us for that before they hire anyone to hold a trowel.

For architects & designers

Specification & sampling

We come in at drawing stage and tell you what the surface will really do — how it behaves in raking light from a north window, what it costs in labor per square foot, where it will craze in five years, and whether the detail you have drawn can actually be troweled by a human arm.

You leave with samples made in the actual room and specification language a general contractor can bid against without three rounds of clarification.

Typically includes
Site walk and light study
On-site sample panels
Written spec & substrate notes
Budget range per finish
For general contractors

Scope supervision

Decorative plaster is the scope that gets sequenced last and blamed first. We supervise it for you: reviewing substrate before anyone loads a hawk, sequencing the coats against the rest of your schedule, overseeing whichever crew is doing the work, and running the punch.

You can hire us to supervise our own crew or somebody else’s. We have done both.

Typically includes
Substrate sign-off
Sequencing against your schedule
Crew oversight and QC visits
Punch list and close-out
For trade partners

Operations setup

Painting and finishing companies hit a ceiling that has nothing to do with craft — they cannot estimate consistently, cannot see job cost until the job is over, and lose a day a week to paperwork. We rebuilt our own shop around that problem and now help other companies do the same.

The software we built for it is JobsOxo, and you can have the system without the consulting if that is all you need.

Typically includes
Estimating structure and rates
Job costing and reporting
Workflow from inquiry to payment
JobsOxo setup and training

How engagements work

First
A conversation

Half an hour on the phone or on site. No charge, and often it ends with us telling you that you do not need us.

Then
A scope and a number

Fixed fee for defined work, or a day rate for ongoing oversight. Written down before anything starts.

Throughout
Visible progress

Everything runs in JobsOxo, so you can see status, photos and costs without waiting for a report.

Bring us in early.

It costs less at drawing stage than it does at punch.

Request a consultation