What a $22 per Square Metre Floor Quote Actually Covers

You have seen the number. It runs in directory listings, on lead-aggregator sites and in letterbox drops across Frankston and the Peninsula: floor sanding and polishing from $22 per square metre. Sometimes $25. Sometimes $35 if the operator is being slightly more careful.

Then a real quote comes back at $45, $55, sometimes $70 a metre, and the obvious conclusion is that somebody is taking advantage.

It is worth walking through what is actually in each number, because the answer is more interesting than either side of that assumption.

The promotional rate is real

Let us be fair to it first. Twenty-two dollars a square metre is not a fiction. It is a real price for a real piece of work: a sanding pass across a floor that is already prepared, followed by a coating.

The trouble is the word prepared. In a genuine house, with a genuine floor, that condition does not exist. And every step required to create it is a step that lives outside the advertised rate.

What gets added, and what it costs

These are standard market rates for the individual components, and they are the same items whether they appear on the original quote or on a variation two days into the job.

GST. Ten per cent, on everything. Promotional rates are frequently quoted exclusive, which turns $22 into $24.20 before anything else has happened.

Carpet tack strip and staple removal — $10 to $20 per square metre. Tack strips are nailed down every hundred millimetres or so around the perimeter of every room. Underlay is stapled in its hundreds across the floor. Every staple comes out by hand before an abrasive touches the timber, because one missed staple tears a belt and scores a line the length of the room. This is slow, entirely manual work and it is the single most consequential preparation step in the job.

Nail punching and perimeter joint filling — $5 to $10 per square metre. Exposed nails must be driven below the surface or the abrasive catches them. On an old floor there can be thousands.

Legacy adhesive and heavy paint removal — $8 to $15 per square metre. Where lino or vinyl was laid directly onto the boards — extremely common in Peninsula kitchens and hallways — there is usually black bituminous mastic underneath. It has to be scraped and cut back, it loads abrasive almost immediately, and it is genuinely unpleasant work. This is the most common reason a promotional quote gets revised on site.

Additional topcoats for high-traffic durability — $10 to $15 per square metre. A hallway in a family home needs more than a hallway in an empty display house.

Add those to $22 and you are somewhere in the mid-forties before anyone has discussed a board repair, a moisture problem or an isolation primer. Which is roughly where a turn-key quote started.

The part that costs more than money

If the arithmetic simply landed in the same place, this would be a pricing preference rather than a real issue. It does not, because of when the conversation happens.

On a turn-key quote, every item is priced before anything starts. You see the scope, you see the numbers, and you decide. If it is more than you want to spend, you can reduce the scope, defer a room, choose a different coating, or go elsewhere. You have every option available to you.

On a promotional quote, the additional items surface on day two — when the carpet is up, the furniture is in the garage, the floor is in pieces and the machines are already in your house. At that point your negotiating position is essentially nil. You can agree to the variation, or you can stop a job halfway through a floor that is now bare timber.

Almost everybody agrees to the variation. That is not an accident of the model; it is the model.

What turn-key actually means

Turn-key means the number you agree to is the number you pay, because the assessment happened before the quote rather than during the work.

On the Peninsula our bands start at $45 per square metre in the Frankston band, $55 in the Mount Eliza band and $70 across the Peninsula band, and the market rate for a full sand with a three-coat 2K waterborne system runs $55 to $75 per square metre. The band differences reflect real variation in floor area, spatial complexity, coating specification and the kind of work those houses actually require — not an assumption about the postcode.

What that price includes, as standard: species identification and a pin-type moisture reading at multiple points; full containment and dust extraction on every machine; tack strip, staple and adhesive removal; nail punching; the coarse-to-fine grit sequence with edge grinding and corner scraping; an isolation primer where the species needs one; sealer, screening, vacuum and topcoats.

What gets itemised separately, because it varies genuinely between floors: board replacement at $8 to $20 per square metre or from $50 a board; gap treatment at $5 to $15; staircase treads at $20 to $35 each; staining at $12 to $25; additional traffic-lane topcoats at $10 to $15.

We would rather show those numbers than fold them into an average that is wrong for everybody.

Where a cheap quote is the right quote

It is worth being honest that not every low price is a problem.

A vacant rental between tenancies, with a sound floor, no board repairs, no adhesive, a solvent-based coating and a property that can absorb the five to seven day evacuation while it off-gasses, is a genuinely cheaper job. Material cost for solvent-based sits at $30 to $40 per square metre against $35 to $45 for waterborne, the preparation is lighter, and quoting it at a premium rate would be dishonest.

Those conditions are common through Frankston, Frankston North, Seaford and Rosebud. If that is your situation, the cheap quote may be entirely correct.

The problem is not low prices. It is prices that describe a different job to the one your floor needs.

How to compare quotes properly

Send every contractor the same list and ask them to answer it in writing.

• Is GST included?
• What is the rate for carpet, tack strip and staple removal?
• Is there legacy adhesive, and what does removing it cost?
• Is nail punching and perimeter joint filling included?
• How many topcoats, and is there an extra coat through the traffic lanes?
• What species is the floor, and does it need an isolation primer?
• What was the moisture reading, and where was it taken?
• What board repairs are needed and what do they cost?

Two quotes that answer all eight are comparable, even if the totals differ — you can see exactly what the difference buys. A quote that will not answer them is not cheaper than the others. It is just less specified, and the missing specification arrives later as a variation.

The one line that tells you most

If you only ask one question, ask about the moisture reading.

It costs nothing to take, it takes ten minutes, and it determines whether the irreversible part of the job should happen now or in four months. A contractor who took one and can tell you the number has assessed your floor. A contractor who did not has quoted a generic job on a floor they have not measured — and everything else on their quote should be read in that light.