Assemble RTA Furniture? There's An App for That, Too

  How much for assembling ready-to-assemble furniture for a lazy customer?

Now there's an app to tell how much should you charge: Handybook.

The service is intended mostly for residential and office cleaning services, but also includes handyman services like IKEA furniture assembly, tiling, and hanging pictures and shelves.

Founded in Boston in 2012 by Harvard Business School students Oisin Hanrahan and Umang Dua, Handybook is so far only available in the New York City and Boston.

You sign up to be part of the roster by filling out a form, and going in for an interview. If you credentials check out, your bookable.

click image to zoomSay a customer asks you to hang a cabinet you've built, and while you're at it, assemble some ready-to-assemble furniture they bought at IKEA. If you do it, the going rate is $39 an hour. I used it in my own zipcode, 60622, to find out what the rate was to assemble an IKEA bed and a table. The app calculated it wolud take four hours, and the going rate was $39 per hour.

Setting aside the worthiness of assembling furniture kits as a career, or whether your day job has room for that occupation - it's helpful to know the market rate for your labor.

That $39 an hour equates to $78,000 annually before taxes and benefits are subtracted. How does that compare to your net?

Another takeaway: if you've got some laborers or installers with time to kill between jobs, consider contracting them out to earn your business a little money on the side. After all, now there's an app for that.