Send the takeoff too — and get real square footage
A tile schedule tells you what goes where. It hardly ever tells you how much — most of its lines count boxes, and a box count isn't a square footage.
So if the builder or the designer did a tile area takeoff, add it to the package. It's usually a screenshot or a one-page list of areas against SF, and it's the single biggest thing you can send us for getting real numbers on the bid. Drop it in the same Plans box as everything else; you don't have to say what it is.
Its numbers land straight on your rooms — a line reading Guest Bathroom 6 Pony Wall and Shower Walls — 70 puts 70 square feet on that bathroom's shower walls. It reads the room and the surface out of the one line, and it will never turn a takeoff line into a room: if we can't work out which room a line means, you get asked, with the rooms to pick from.
Takeoff numbers usually include waste, and the good ones say so at the bottom — "install SF runs about 10–15% under these numbers." When the document says that, we price the trimmed figure and show you what we did, with a one-tap way to put the printed numbers back.
A number that can't be right doesn't land. A 180 sq ft shower floor is a typo, not a shower. It goes on the list of things to check with the figure quoted, so you can see what the takeoff said.
We tell you what we couldn't measure
The bigger change: when a surface has no square footage, you now hear about it in one place instead of finding out later.
17 areas still have no square footage. Want to see which? 4 shower floors have no size, plus 2 backsplashes and a floor. Nothing in the drawings, the schedule or the takeoff gave us an area for them. 6 read TBD on the takeoff, so the builder hasn't taken them off yet either.
Each line says what the schedule did give — "the schedule orders 21 box, which doesn't say how big the area is" — so you know whether to measure it or chase the builder.
Two more one-tap checks come with it:
- Rooms the drawings don't show. When the schedule prices rooms your plans never draw — a pool house, a later phase — we ask once whether they're yours, and keep them in the bid until you say otherwise.
- Rooms the schedule skips. A bathroom or a kitchen on the plans that nothing prices gets one question. Garages, closets and stairwells stay quiet, the way they should.
Surfaces name themselves properly now
A pony wall is shower wall. A tub front is tub surround. A tiled island front is an accent wall. These used to land under names of their own, which looked fine on the room card and then quietly contributed nothing to your pricing. They're on the right surfaces now, so the square footage on them actually prices.
See Reading drawing sets and tile schedules for the whole flow.