The basement
Pick a common job to start, then replace every rate with an invoice and a crew you have timed. Changing scope, ceiling, floor, or bath fills starting hours and material only when you have not already edited that field.
Hours and material rates
These start from the scope, ceiling, floor, and bath you picked. They are ballpark crew figures, not a catalog or a guarantee.
Your costs
Payroll burden covers employer taxes, workers’ compensation, liability insurance, and paid time off. Underestimating it is how a $30 / SF basement that looked profitable was not.
Hand the customer a proposal
The price above is for you. This is the page you print or save as a PDF and give to the homeowner — your details, their details, the scope, the deposit split, and a line for them to sign. Your business details are saved on this device so you only type them once; the customer’s details are never saved.
Everything on the printed page is text you typed or a number this calculator worked out. It contains no warranty, lien, or cancellation wording — those depend on your jurisdiction and your contract, and this tool is not the place to invent them.
Your bid
- Finished
- Floor buy with waste
- Travel
- Crew hours
- Loaded labor
- Shell, ceiling, floor
- Bath, egress, extras
- Travel & other
- Overhead
- Total cost
- Profit
- Price per SF
- Effective hourly rate
- Walk-away price
A bid link carries your own rates — wage, burden, overhead, and target margin — so the page reopens exactly as you left it. Send it to yourself or your crew. The numbers ride after the #, which is never sent to a server, so copying a link uploads nothing. The customer should get the price, not the link.
Same basement, three scopes
| Scope | Hours | Price |
|---|
Where the hours go
Transparent arithmetic from your own inputs. The starting hours and material rates are common ballpark figures, not an industry standard, a benchmark, or a guarantee — time your own crews and replace them.
Common questions
What does this basement-finish estimate include?
The price adds up shell labor and material (framing, insulation, drywall, or paint depending on scope), a ceiling plane, a floor with waste, a bathroom kit when you add one, egress windows, bedroom extras, a stair rebuild, wet bar, HVAC extend, and permit coordination when checked, plus travel, overhead, and your target margin — all from the finished square footage, scope, and rates you enter, not a flat per-square-foot price list.
Why does a legal-living suite cost so much more than a rec room the same size?
Rec-room, framed-finish, and legal-living each start from their own shell hours and material rates — legal-living adds framing, insulation, and drywall hours per square foot that a rec-room paint-and-carpet job skips, plus egress-window and bedroom hours and material that do not apply to a rec room at all. The “Same basement, three scopes” comparison prices your same finished square footage under each scope’s starting kit so you can see where a cheap rec-room rate would lose money on a bedroom suite.
Why is the floor I buy bigger than the basement I measured?
Flooring waste — cuts, transitions, and pattern loss — is applied to the finished square footage to get the floor material you actually buy, which is why the floor line in the breakdown uses a larger number than the finished square feet everywhere else.
Is my data uploaded anywhere?
No account and no network requests — the calculator runs entirely in your browser. Your bid is saved in this browser’s local storage between visits, and a bid link you copy carries those same numbers in the page’s URL hash rather than sending anything to a server. Your business details for the printed proposal are saved separately on this device; the customer’s details are never saved.
What’s the difference between the bid price and the walk-away price?
The bid price already includes your target margin on top of labor, materials, and overhead. The walk-away price is the total cost underneath it — shell, ceiling, floor, bath, egress, and every other line item — the point below which the finish stops being profitable at all.
Does this check building code, egress, or habitable-space requirements?
No. Hours and material rates are ballpark shop figures you can edit, not a building-code determination, an egress design, or a habitable-space certificate. It also does not price basement waterproofing, a walk-in shower remodel, a drywall-only job, or a standalone flooring install — those are separate jobs with their own calculators. Whether a specific basement meets code for bedrooms and egress is still a judgment call for the inspector.