Craft Quantities
Plan & Takeoffs

Quote check

Check a floor sanding and refinishing quote

Paste the quote you were given and enter your measurements. Every line is read against the job: what the quote leaves out, what it adds, which quantities sit outside the computed range, and what to ask. Quantities only — never prices.
  • 4Lines the job needs
  • 5Measurements
  • QuestionsNever a verdict

How the quote is read

Each line of a floor sanding and refinishing quote is matched to the line of the job it names, or marked as something the Floor sanding and refinishing takeoff does not measure — labour, removal, hire, fees, or anything else. Work the takeoff lists as part of the job but gives no quantity for is read as that work, not as something the quote adds.

The job’s own figures come from 5 measurements — floor length, floor width, doorways, floor sheeted outside the doorways, covering lifted first, as a loose depth over the floor — run through the same calculators as the takeoff, so the two give the same figure for the same job.

Reading a floor sanding and refinishing quote

A floor sanding quote prices a finish on timber nobody has seen bare yet, so it is worth having in writing what the price assumes: solid boards or engineered ones, how many grits, whether the edges and doorways are sanded to the same standard as the open floor, and what happens if a board splits, a nail head is found deep or the gaps turn out wider than expected. Worth asking how gaps are dealt with, slivers or a filler, and whether that is in the price or charged by the hour.

The finish is where two quotes for the same room part company. Worth seeing the product named by make and system, lacquer, polyurethane or oil, how many coats, whether a sealer goes under it, whether the floor is screened between coats, and how long before it can be walked on and before the furniture and rugs go back. Worth confirming whether a stain or colour is wanted and priced, and whether the job ends with a maintenance product and its instructions.

The work around the floor is easy to leave unspoken. Worth asking who lifts and takes away the old carpet and its gripper, who moves the furniture, whether the beading or quarter round is renewed or put back, whether the doors are taken off and rehung, and whether thresholds are included where the floor meets another room. Worth asking too how the dust is contained, and, in an older house, whether paint or varnish on the floor is tested for lead before any sanding starts.

Three steps

  1. Give your measurements. The page opens on a typical job so it has something to show.
  2. Paste the quote's lines as they came, or add them one at a time. Leave the prices in — they are taken out, never read.
  3. Read the report: what is left out, what is added, what sits outside the range, and one list of questions to send.

Your quote

The floor sanding and refinishing quote you were given

Paste from an email, or open or drop a PDF, Excel, CSV or text file, or a photo of the quote. Amounts of money are taken out before anything is read — this page compares quantities, never prices.

Nothing you paste or open leaves this device.

or one the job needs:

The reading

What the quote says, against the job

Floor sanding and refinishing · Floor length 16.5 ft · Floor width 13 ft · Doorways 1 · Floor sheeted outside the doorways 43 sq ft · Covering lifted first, as a loose depth over the floor 1.25 inFloor length 5 m · Floor width 4 m · Doorways 1 · Floor sheeted outside the doorways 4 m² · Covering lifted first, as a loose depth over the floor 0.03 m

  • What it leaves out

    Every line the job needs that nothing on the quote reads as, with the quantity your measurements produce.

  • What it adds

    Lines this job's takeoff does not measure — labour, removal, hire, fees, anything else — each named for what it is.

  • What sits outside the range

    Quantities above or below the computed range, by how much, in the quote's unit or converted and shown.

  • What to ask

    One list of questions, in the quote's order, ready to copy and send. Questions, never a verdict.

Paste the quote above, or add its lines one at a time. The reading appears here as each line is read.

Outside what this takeoff measures

6

Nothing in the reading measures these. Whether the quote covers each is worth asking in its own right: a scope missing from a quote tends to become a cost after work has started. Why each is left out is on the takeoff.

  • Joist or subfloor renewal, and boards beyond the odd one
  • Bitumen or old adhesive taken off
  • Moving the furniture out and back
  • Staining the timber a colour
  • Laying new flooring of another kind
  • Trimming a door's foot, or an undercut, to clear a raised floor

The reference

Every line the reading looks for

For Floor length 16.5 ft · Floor width 13 ft · Doorways 1 · Floor sheeted outside the doorways 43 sq ft · Covering lifted first, as a loose depth over the floor 1.25 inFloor length 5 m · Floor width 4 m · Doorways 1 · Floor sheeted outside the doorways 4 m² · Covering lifted first, as a loose depth over the floor 0.03 m. Each is the calculator linked under it, run with those measurements; a range is that calculator at both ends of one choice, not a margin for error.

How the ranges are taken

Where the choice is cutting waste, the ends are the site’s own allowances: 5%, the tight buffer of a crew with a planned set-out, and 15%, the wider one a first-timer orders. Where the calculator decides between patterns or materials, the ends are the options it offers. Where it adds nothing for loss, the range runs from the net quantity to 15% over it.

A minimum — the fewest hangers a spacing allows, the least airflow a room needs — has no upper end. A single figure carries an allowance the material itself needs, such as a lap, and names it.

What a reading like this cannot see

  • It does not know your prices, your market, or what the work ought to cost.
  • It does not know the building — the access, the condition of what is there, or what has to happen first.
  • It cannot check a lump sum, because there is no quantity in one.
  • A line it reads as missing may be priced under another name. A quantity outside the range is not evidence of anything. Each is a reason to ask a question.
  • Two quotes are not comparable until their scopes are.
  • It is not advice, and it is no substitute for a second quote.

The full takeoff

Every quantity for this job, with its working

The Floor sanding and refinishing takeoff runs the same calculators on the same measurements and shows what sits under each line here.

Open the takeoffEvery quote check

  • Base, allowance, order

    Each line's quantity before and after its allowance, and what to buy.

  • Every allowance editable

    Change a waste figure and the order follows, with its source named.

  • Into a project

    Add the whole job to a workspace with your own prices.

Frequently asked questions

What quantities does a floor sanding and refinishing job need?
It depends on the measurements, so this page asks for yours. At the size it opens on — Floor length 5 m · Floor width 4 m · Doorways 1 · Floor sheeted outside the doorways 4 m² · Covering lifted first, as a loose depth over the floor 0.03 m — the lines come to: Lacquer, varnish, oil or polyurethane (poly), with its sealer and abrasives, 7.51–8.23 L; Beading or skirting (scotia, quarter round, shoe molding), 18–19.7 m; Threshold strips (transitions, threshold bars, T-moldings, reducers), 0.95–1.03 m; Skip (dumpster), 0.6 m³. In imperial units — Floor length 16.5 ft · Floor width 13 ft · Doorways 1 · Floor sheeted outside the doorways 43 sq ft · Covering lifted first, as a loose depth over the floor 1.25 in — they come to: Lacquer, varnish, oil or polyurethane (poly), with its sealer and abrasives, 1.98–2.17 gal; Beading or skirting (scotia, quarter round, shoe molding), 58.8–64.5 linear ft; Threshold strips (transitions, threshold bars, T-moldings, reducers), 3.15–3.45 ft; Skip (dumpster), 0.83 yd³.
Which line on a floor sanding and refinishing quote varies the most?
The Lacquer, varnish, oil or polyurethane (poly), with its sealer and abrasives: 7.51–8.23 L for a job measured Floor length 5 m · Floor width 4 m · Doorways 1 · Floor sheeted outside the doorways 4 m² · Covering lifted first, as a loose depth over the floor 0.03 m, depending on the finish lost to tools and containers allowed, from 5% to 15%.
What does a floor sanding and refinishing quote often leave out?
The reading names every line of the job that nothing on the quote reads as — any of the 4 lines the takeoff measures. The takeoff also lists 6 things it does not measure, shown under the reading, and each is worth asking about: a scope missing from a quote tends to become a cost after work has started.
Can I paste the quote exactly as it came?
Yes — from an email, a PDF or a spreadsheet, one item to a line. Amounts of money are taken out before anything is read, headings and totals are skipped, and each line is shown with what it was read as, so a misreading is one correction. Quantities in the other unit system are converted and the conversion is shown; a count of boxes is never compared with a count of tiles.
Does this check the price as well?
No. It reads quantities, never prices, and this site publishes none: an installed price moves with the market, the season, the access and the specification, so a figure for what the work ought to cost would give you confidence in a number nobody can defend. A quantity against your own measurements is checkable, and every figure here links to the calculator that produced it.