Template day, cutout and install setup: 9.5 hours before square feet count
Some of the work on a stone kitchen does not care how many square feet it has. The laser template on site, the sink cutout and faucet holes, seam prep, wrapping pieces for the truck, the install crew's setup and the paperwork come to 9.5 hours in the example, or $598.50 at $63.
On top of that, each finished square foot takes 11.6 minutes across the bridge saw, edge polishing, dry fit and setting. That is $12.18 a square foot of time before any profit. Track both numbers on your next five jobs and replace the defaults.
Slab yield: why 50 finished feet uses 65 feet of quartz
You buy slabs, not square feet. The example counts 1.3 square feet of slab for every finished square foot, so a 50 sq ft kitchen uses about 65 square feet of material once the sink cutout, the overhang offcuts and the leftover piece of the last slab are counted.
That yield factor is the most important number in the materials box. If your nesting only reaches 1.5, raise the slab cost per finished square foot to match, or the margin goes into the remnant rack. Switching the stone from mid-grade quartz to quartzite at the same yield takes the example from $89.17 to $122.86 a square foot.
A 30 sq ft vanity job at $105 a foot
The price table runs the same quartz at 30, 50, 80 and 120 square feet. Thirty comes to $105.00 a foot, fifty to $89.17, eighty to $80.26 and 120 to $75.31. The $750 minimum sits underneath for the single bath vanity that would otherwise come in far lower.
Old top tear-out is its own line, $175 in the example. On new construction set it to 0 and the kitchen comes to $84.97 a square foot. Keeping it separate lets the customer see what the removal costs instead of guessing it is buried in the stone.
What the spreadsheet adds to land on $93.36 a foot
The quick version leaves out the safety cushion, the markup on outside work and the rate for each machine by its own hourly cost. The spreadsheet also walks you through the stone shop costs owners forget, prints a customer quote with your slab and seam terms and logs real hours against the estimate, which is how it lands on $93.36 a square foot for the same kitchen.
Your break-even rate will not be the example's $63. Work it out with the free true hourly rate calculator, see how the overhead line feeds it in the overhead and profit guide, and check a finished kitchen against its quote with the job costing guide. The countertop estimating guide covers granite, marble and installed prices owners use as a check.