Slide outline for Lesson 4.13. Thirteen slides, one day. Every price on these slides is a 2026 Long Island figure and is marked [update]. [Sal: on slide 3, swap the described listings for two or three real ones printed from a local marketplace or thrift site, with the seller's name and photo cropped out.]
Do now
- Sketch your client's room from memory. No looking.
- Two minutes.
- Then open your plan and compare
- Write one thing you forgot
Teacher notes
Day 8 of the floor plan stack. While they draw, pull the students whose Lesson 4.12 exit card failed the path math and give them the two-minute check. Sheets go in the stack.
Furnish It on a Budget
- Lesson 4.13
- Today: every piece on your plan gets a price
- The plan is a wish until it is paid for
- When the money runs out before the list does, what goes?
Teacher notes
Image: a floor plan with a price tag hanging off each piece of furniture.
One desk, three prices
- New in a box: $149 [update]
- The same desk secondhand from a listing: $40 [update]
- DIY, a door blank on two file cabinets: $35 in parts [update]
- Same job. Three prices.
- Your client has $400 for the whole room. Which desk, and what does that choice buy you somewhere else?
Teacher notes
Image: three photos side by side: a boxed desk, a marketplace listing with the seller cropped out, a door-on-cabinets desk.
Hand vote first: who has bought something secondhand, and what was it? That vote tells you how much explaining the middle column needs.
The budget comes from the card
- Room refresh: $400 [update]
- Tiny house interior: $1,500 [update]
- A refresh means the walls and the floor are already there
- The money buys furniture, storage, light, paint, and finish
Teacher notes
Nobody gets more money. The budget is a constraint from the client, the same way the room size is.
How to read the catalog
- Item number, item, size
- New: from a store, in a box, with a warranty
- Secondhand: thrift store, yard sale, or a listing. You check it yourself.
- DIY: the price is the parts. The labor is the client's.
- A dash means it is not sold that way. "None" means there is no safe way to make it.
Teacher notes
Image: one catalog row blown up large with each column labeled.
Point at the quality note column. That column is the whole lesson. A price without a quality note is a guess.
The tax
- In New York, furniture and building supplies are taxed. Food is not.
- The rate here is 8.625 percent [update to your county]
- Subtotal times 0.08625 equals the tax
- Subtotal times 1.08625 equals the total
- Worked line: twin bed frame secondhand $60, tax $5.18, total $65.18
Teacher notes
Write the line on the board and leave it. Compute the tax once, on the subtotal, at the bottom. Adding it line by line gives the same answer and twice the errors.
A budget is not a limit on your ideas
- It is the order you buy them in
- Needs first. Wants after, only if money is left.
- Fill the Budget Sheet header now: client, budget, tax rate
Teacher notes
[Sal: two minutes from Oracle or financial services on what it costs to be wrong about a price. Save the secondhand dresser story for slide 11.]
Price the plan, 14 minutes
- Every piece on your plan is one line on the sheet
- Item number, which column, price, running subtotal
- Needs first. Wants after.
- Stop and re-decide when your subtotal passes 80 percent of the budget with needs still on the list
- Calculators are allowed all period
Teacher notes
Image: the Budget Sheet with the first five lines filled in for the Okafor card.
Circulate with the clipboard. Ask every team: why new for this one and secondhand for that one? Watch for a secondhand mattress; the catalog says never.
Never secondhand
- Mattresses and crib mattresses: never
- Bed bugs, dust mites, stains, no warranty
- A crib only secondhand if it was made after 2011 and the seller has the model number. Check the recall list.
- Safe sleep from Lesson 3.17 is the rule, not a preference
Teacher notes
The Ahmed team already owns the full mattress. Do not let them buy it twice.
Tax and total
- Subtotal: add every line once
- Tax: subtotal times 0.08625, or use the table on page 4
- Total: subtotal plus tax
- The hidden number: to land at or under $400 with tax, your subtotal has to be $368 or less
- At or under $1,500, the subtotal has to be $1,380 or less
Teacher notes
Say the hidden number out loud. Half the class is at $399 and thinks it is finished.
Over budget? The trade-off box
- Cross out a want
- Switch a column: new to secondhand, secondhand to DIY
- Remove a piece from the plan, and change the plan too
- Under budget? Add a want, or write the leftover as the client's cushion.
- A secondhand dresser at $30 has a broken drawer. The new one is $179. What does "cheaper" cost here?
Teacher notes
Image: the trade-off box with two rows filled in: paint one gallon becomes one quart, saving $40.
Cheaper costs time, a repair, or a drawer that never works. Then model the five-step decision model out loud on one team's hardest choice: name the choice, list options, weigh each against what matters to the client, decide, look back. Use the armchair: new at $189 with arms and a firm seat, or secondhand at $45 that has to be sat in and pressed first.
Three justifications
- One new, one secondhand, one DIY or free
- Each one names the client's need
- "I chose ___ (new / secondhand / DIY) for ___ because the client needs ___"
- DIY is not free. Who builds it, and do they know how?
Teacher notes
These three boxes are scored on Rubric 04 criterion 3. Written or dictated to a partner, both count.
Exit card
- My total is $___ against a budget of $___
- The hardest trade-off was ___ and I chose ___ because ___
Teacher notes
Two students read theirs. Sort by over and under. Anyone over gets the first five minutes of Lesson 4.14 Day 1 to fix it before building. Then two teams report the total, the biggest single line, and the hardest trade-off, and the class says whether that trade-off gave up a want or a need. Preview Lesson 4.14: the model gets built from scrap, which is the DIY column made real.