input on cost

[cbrach411]

for our sheer waterfall/ raised area they gave me a break down of costs:

10' of 16x16 travertine cap ( top of sheer) 27$ per foot= 270

15' of stone on face& sides of raised area 15$ per ft = 225

and then apparently they have to finish the back of the raised area which is called strip & finish 10 ft of this at 21 DOLLARS per ft = 210$
this seems extremely expensive to just finish the back of the raised area like why wouldn't we just put stone on the back of as well since its CHEAPER?

Thanks for any help anyone could provide.

 

[Corleone]

for our sheer waterfall/ raised area they gave me a break down of costs:

10' of 16x16 travertine cap ( top of sheer) 27$ per foot= 270

15' of stone on face& sides of raised area 15$ per ft = 225

and then apparently they have to finish the back of the raised area which is called strip & finish 10 ft of this at 21 DOLLARS per ft = 210$
this seems extremely expensive to just finish the back of the raised area like why wouldn't we just put stone on the back of as well since its CHEAPER?

Thanks for any help anyone could provide.

The cap seems expensive to me, but that could be the standard price. I have over 100 feet of travertine cap on my retaining wall and a large flower bed area, and I did it myself in a day with no prior experience(although I did hire out the stone on the face of the walls). The travertine cost me 3.50 per foot to give you a guideline of what they're charging you for labor vs material cost. In my opinion, laying the cap is much easier then doing the face. There's really very little that can go wrong when you put the cap on, just make sure it's straight and level and move on to the next one right?

The stackstone looks pretty reasonable. Your builder is probably getting the stone for around 3-5 per sq ft I'd guess --depending on what kind of connections he has. Honestly, the pricing doesn't look bad, except I have no idea what strip and finish means, I'd probably think of it the same way you do and just do the stone all the way around for 15 per ft which is quite reasonable. If you bought the stone yourself at a good price and hired out the labor, you probably wouldn't be too far from that price.