You set a unit price for each interior assembly once, in Settings, Estimating, Interior assemblies: drywall, insulation, paint, interior doors, base trim, closet rod and shelf, a price per floor finish, cabinets and butcher-block tops by the foot, tub and shower inserts, plumbing per full bath, half bath, kitchen and laundry, an electric water heater, and electrical and a heat pump per square foot — or per device and per ton instead. The floor plan measures each one, with a sentence saying how it was counted, and the estimate's Interior from the floor plan card shows every line and the interior subtotal. Add interior to estimate puts it on as one named group of lines under Services & add-ons, each tagged with its trade; nothing is ever added by itself. The operating system for post-frame and barndominium builders, so the defaults are a barndo's builder-grade finish-out: a sealed concrete shop floor, tub and shower inserts, butcher-block tops, all-electric.
Also called: interior assemblies · barndominium interior pricing · price per bath · drywall per square foot · finish-out estimate · barndo finish out cost · interior allowance · shouse interior estimate
The floor plan, priced at your numbers
Try itOpen the estimate for Ridgeline 40×60 Shouse and the Interior from the floor plan card prices what was drawn: 18 assemblies, $75,652.00 — drywall, insulation, paint, nine interior doors, base trim, two closets, the shop's sealed concrete, LVP and tile, cabinets and tops, two tub and shower inserts, two full baths, the kitchen, the laundry, the water heater, electrical and a heat pump. Each line has its quantity, your unit price and a coloured edge for its trade. The card's header says Not on the estimate until you press Add interior to estimate.
The plan is drawn and the shell is priced, and the finish-out still waits for somebody to rebuild it in a spreadsheet.
An estimator who can see the finish-out priced the moment the plan is drawn stops dreading the inside of a barndo. For the owner it is a real interior number in the first meeting, built from his own prices, instead of an allowance pulled out of the air.
Your prices, in the units you quote
Try itSettings, Estimating, Interior assemblies holds a unit price for each assembly in the unit you already quote it in: drywall $2.25 a square foot of board hung and finished, interior doors $325 each prehung with hardware and casing, a full bath's plumbing $4,500. Each row says what its quantity counts, carries a trade, switches on or off, renames, and resets to the builder-grade default. Save assemblies prices the next interior added to an estimate.
Interior software wants a price for every fitting and fixture, so the builder keeps his real numbers in a spreadsheet instead.
A builder knows his price per bath, not per fitting. Pricing in the units his subs bid in means the numbers go in once and mean what he thinks they mean — and the defaults give a new account a real starting point instead of a page of zeroes.
Every quantity says how it was counted
The counts come from what is drawn, and each line says so. 2 full baths (rooms labelled Bathroom). 1 water heater placed in the plan — and with none placed, one is assumed because there is a bath, kitchen or laundry, and the line says that instead. 9 interior doors drawn in the plan (1 cased opening with no door not counted). 2 tub or shower placed in the plan. Add a door or change what a room is, and the count follows.
The interior gets priced from a room count somebody typed, and it drifts from the plan every time the customer moves a wall.
A count that shows its working gets trusted; a number with no explanation gets counted again. When the line says which rooms it read, the estimator checks it in a glance — and a customer asking why there are two bath packages gets a straight answer.
Cabinets by the foot you actually placed
Cabinets are priced by the linear foot of base, tall, vanity and island cabinet placed in the plan — 16.5 LF across 6 cabinets, rounded up to 17 LF at $225, with wall cabinets riding in the rate. Tops follow the cabinets that carry one: 18.5 LF of butcher block over 7 cabinets. Tub and shower inserts are counted by the fixture.
Cabinets get priced off a guess at the run length, and the guess is always short.
The cabinet run on the quote is the cabinet run in the drawing. Nobody measures the kitchen twice, and when the customer adds an island in the meeting, the price of the island is already on the screen.
A floor price for every finish
Each floor finish is its own assembly — sealed concrete, luxury vinyl plank, tile, carpet, hardwood, epoxy — priced off the rooms finished in it, net of cabinets, tubs and showers, with waste. On the 40×60 the shop's 728 sq ft of sealed concrete is $1.50 a foot, 1,190 sq ft of LVP $4.50 and 331 sq ft of tile in the baths, laundry and mudroom $11.00 — three lines, not one blended number.
One flooring allowance for the whole house ignores the sealed shop floor sitting beside the tiled baths.
A shouse floor is not one floor. Pricing the shop's sealed slab at the bath tile's rate is how a barndo quote ends up thousands high or low; pricing each finish where it was chosen keeps the number honest and lets the customer see what a finish change costs.
Per square foot, per device or per ton
Try itElectrical and HVAC each come two ways. Electrical — all-electric, per sq ft prices the living area; switch it off and Electrical — per device prices the 65 receptacles, switches, lights, fans and alarms placed in the plan instead. HVAC — heat pump, per sq ft or HVAC — per ton: 2.5 tons, one ton per 600 sq ft of living area, and the line says plainly it is a rule of thumb and a Manual J governs.
The software prices electrical one way and your electrician bids it another, so the estimate never matches the bid.
Some electricians bid by the foot and some by the device; some HVAC subs by the foot and some by the ton. Pricing the way your own subs bid means the estimate and the sub's number line up — and nobody has to convert between them.
One named group, tagged, removable whole
Press Add interior to estimate and it lands under Services & add-ons as one group: Interior — from the floor plan, 18 lines, $75,652.00, each line with its quantity and rate and tagged with its trade — drywall as Drywall, insulation as Insulation, paint as Paint. Remove these lines lifts the whole group back out. The card's header now reads On the estimate.
Interior lines mixed into a long list of services can't be found, changed or taken out together.
A group you can lift out whole is a decision you can undo. The estimator can show the customer the shell-only number and the finished number in the same meeting, and the interior never gets lost among the gutters and the concrete.
Each sub gets their part of the finish-out
Because every interior line arrives tagged, Show one trade splits the finish-out by sub straight away. Plumbing on the 40×60 is five lines — the inserts, two full baths, the kitchen, the laundry and the water heater — $16,100.00 before markup, ready to print for the plumber. How the tags work is on trade colours on estimate lines.
The interior goes on as one long list and somebody spends an hour sorting it by sub before anybody can bid.
The finish-out is where most of a barndo's subs are. Pricing the interior and splitting it by trade in the same press saves the estimator a second pass, and each sub gets their own scope the same afternoon.
Prices change; a quote doesn't, unless you say so
Lines on an estimate keep the price they were added at. Raise drywall to $2.50 and the card tells you: the interior on the estimate ($75,652.00) differs from the plan at today's prices ($77,092.25). It stays as it is unless you replace it. Replace interior lines asks first, and says that any change made to those lines by hand is replaced too. Opening an estimate never adds, updates or re-prices them.
A price change in Settings silently re-prices a quote the customer already read, and the phone rings.
A customer holding a number must never open their quote to a different one. Changing a quote is the builder's decision, so the card shows the gap and the builder chooses — and nothing he tweaked by hand disappears without a warning.
See the number while you are still drawing
Try itIn the 3D builder, the floor plan's Takeoff window shows Priced interior — 18 assemblies at your prices, $75,652.00 above the material counts, with every line one click away. It is read-only: the plan is still changing, so the button that puts the interior on a quote lives on the estimate. The counts themselves are the interior takeoff.
While the plan is being drawn nobody can say what the inside is going to cost until it's all redone in the estimate.
A builder sketching with a customer wants to know what the extra bedroom does to the price before the customer leaves. Seeing the interior subtotal while the walls are still moving answers that, without anything landing on a quote by accident.
- 1Set your prices in Settings, Estimating, Interior assemblies — builder-grade defaults are already there, each with a unit, a trade, an on/off switch and a reset
- 2Draw the rooms, doors, cabinets and fixtures in the floor plan
- 3Open the estimate: the Interior from the floor plan card lists every assembly the plan has, its quantity, how it was counted and the Interior subtotal
- 4Press Add interior to estimate — it lands under Services & add-ons as one group, Interior — from the floor plan, each line tagged with its trade
- 5Prices changed later? The card says so, and Replace interior lines re-prices the group behind a confirm
- 6While you draw, the floor plan's Takeoff window shows the same priced subtotal, read-only
A barndominium quote is half shell and half finish-out, and builders price the finish-out in assemblies — so much a bath, so much a foot of cabinet, so much a square foot of drywall hung and finished — not in studs and screws. The floor plan already knew how many baths, doors and feet of cabinet the house had; the estimate still had the builder re-keying it into a spreadsheet to get to a number. Now the plan's own counts meet the builder's own prices. And adding it is a press, never a side effect, so a quote the customer has already read never moves on its own.
- Re-keying the floor plan into a spreadsheet to price the interior
- Interior quantities typed from memory and drifting from the plan
- Finish-out lines mixed into the services with no way to find or remove them together
- A price change silently moving a quote the customer already read
