TV Mount Works opened in 2019 with one rule: write the job on a single sheet before the drill ever turns on. Seven years and 4,180 sign-offs later, the rule still holds. We are three installers, one binder, one van.
— The line the workshop opened with.
The first job sheet was written on the back of a fuel receipt.
August 2019. A friend had been waiting three weeks for a quote from an installer who had visited twice and not written anything down. On the third week he asked us to come over instead. Sat at his kitchen table, on the back of a petrol receipt, we wrote: JOB-01 · standard wall mount · bracket included · level twice · 45 min · $160 flat. He signed it. We did it on the Saturday.
Two of his neighbours saw the install and asked for the same. We wrote the same sheet, twice. By the third month we had a printed pad with rows for line items and a column for revision marks. The fuel receipt is still pinned in the workshop.
Seven years later we are three installers — Esmé, Cal, Tiwa — and one workshop. The job-sheet pad is now a binder, but the sheet itself looks almost exactly the same. The reason the figure in your reply matches the figure on your invoice is that they are the same sheet, run twice.
We do not advertise. We have politely returned two acquisition offers. Growing the workshop would mean fewer signed sheets and more reps, and the sheet is the reason we are here.
A values page is usually decorative. These four are operating constraints — we have lost a handful of jobs over each, which is how we know they are real.
The sheet exists before any tool comes out. Line items, time on site, fixed figure. If it changes on site, we stop and ask before we keep going.
Studs, joists, rated masonry. Never drywall alone. If the studs are wrong for the screen, we span them with a steel bar before mounting.
Range tested, placement confirmed, sheet signed by both of us on the spot — before we tidy. Your copy is your twelve-month warranty.
Cloths down before any drill. Dust vacuumed. Packaging carried out with us. The room is yours again, with a screen on the wall and nothing else moved.
You'll meet one of these three at your door. Each runs the same checklist, fills the same sheet, signs the same way. The finish from any of them is identical.
FOUNDER · LEAD INSTALL
A carpenter by trade before turning to walls. Specialises in in-wall cable runs and the older buildings with plaster-on-lath. Writes the most sheets.
SENIOR INSTALL
Five years in. The calmest hand on a fireplace install and the most-requested installer for repeat customers. Carries a level he has nicknamed for some reason.
INSTALL
Four years in. Full-motion arms, awkward corners, and the rooms other installers walk away from. A trained luthier before turning to brackets — the patience shows.
A small workshop keeps itself honest by counting. Refreshed at the end of every month from the binder.
No expansion to four vans, no franchise, no holding-company exit. The sheet is the product; growing the rota would lower the standard of the sheet. If anything ever changes here, you will hear it from Esmé first, in writing.
SHEETS OPEN: 23
SHEETS QUOTED THIS WEEK: 41
MEDIAN QUOTE TIME: 7.2 H
SIGN-OFFS THIS WEEK: 18
CALLBACKS THIS WEEK: 0