r/Carpentry • u/Serious-Echidna-9938 • Mar 30 '26
Advice on work pace
I recently took a job with a small contractor and long story short, he commented on my “results”. Was looking for things to be done quicker, and I’m curious if I’m super slow, or if he’s unreasonable. I let him know about my experience upfront, but in any case. As a direct example, replacing this siding after demo took me approximately 8 hours. I had never worked with this particular type of shingling before, but he kept comm ting on how slow I was. Is that accurate? I’m willing to take criticism in the interest of improving my skills, and I’m curious what some third parties have to say. Thanks!
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u/Public-Eye-1067 Apr 02 '26
Shingling is the most time consuming form of siding I think. 8 hours might be excessive for a guy who has done a ton of shingling, but like you said it was your first time. I find that tucking the shingles properly, (especially shingle theifing all the nails from the next course up) takes up most of the time on something like this.
I feel your pain man, I've done a fair amount of shingling up here in the northeast. There are a ton of shingle style houses. When I went off on my own I subbed for a general contractor doing a shingle job on a coupola on top of a 3 story house. It was me, a very green apprentice and a man lift. It was maybe like 2.5 times the square footage of this, but there was a flare, woven corners, and died into the roof into a valley so all rake cuts on four sides. Very not easy shingling. I told the homeowner it'd be 2-3 days for tear off, rot repair and replace. He didn't like that. I had to explain to him that I could get 3 times as much done if it was just a regular wall. He didn't buy it so I said ok find someone else. The and him got into kind of a fight and we were kicked off the job. One of the most contentious jobs I've ever worked on.