What a written price should actually say

One: what is being done, in enough detail to argue about

"Replace faucet" is not a scope. "Remove the existing kitchen faucet, fit the customer-supplied faucet to the existing three-hole sink with new supply lines, test under load" is a scope. The second one tells you that the existing valves are not included, which is exactly the thing that turns into a disagreement.

The test is simple: could two people read it and picture different amounts of work? If yes, it needs another sentence.

Two: what is excluded

More useful than the inclusions, and more often missing. Honest exclusions on a small job are things like: shutoff valve replacement if the existing ones do not hold, flange repair if the old one is cracked, paint touch-up after a drywall patch, hauling the old fixture away.

None of those are tricks. They are things nobody can see until the job is open. The point of listing them is that you find out they are extra before you say yes, not afterwards.

Three: the number, and what kind of number it is

A flat price and an hourly estimate are different promises, and the document should say which it is giving you.

• A flat price is a commitment. The risk of it taking longer sits with the person who quoted it. That is the point of it.
• An hourly rate with an estimated range means the risk sits with you. That is fair for genuinely unpredictable work, as long as it is labelled and as long as you are told when it is running over — at the time, not at the end.

What should not happen is a flat price that quietly becomes hourly because the day went badly.

Four: who supplies what

On small jobs it is often sensible for you to buy the fixture, because you are the one who has to look at it for the next ten years. What matters is that the document says so, and says what the price does include — the consumables, the wax ring, the supply lines, the anchors.

Five: what happens if something is found

This is the clause that matters most and the one almost nobody writes. It should say, in one sentence, that if the work uncovers something that changes the price, you will be told then, with the new figure, and nothing further happens until you agree.

Without it, "we found a problem" becomes an invoice rather than a conversation. With it, you keep control of the spend at the only moment when control is worth anything.

Six: the name you are actually hiring

The legal name of the business, not just a brand. Whether they are licensed, and for what. Whether they carry liability insurance. A phone number and an email that a person answers.

If any of those is hard to get, that itself is the information.

Two questions worth asking out loud

"Is this the price or an estimate?" People use the words interchangeably and they should not. Ask, and listen to whether the answer is specific.

"What would make this cost more?" A good answer is immediate and specific, because anyone who has done the job fifty times knows exactly what the three risks are. A vague answer means they have not thought about it, and you will be the one paying for the thinking.

What a deposit should look like on a small job

On the kind of work on this site, nothing. There is no reason to hold your money before turning up to replace a faucet. If someone asks for a substantial payment up front for a two-hour job, ask why, and be unsatisfied with a vague answer.

For larger projects California limits what a contractor may take as a down payment, and the rules are published by the Contractors State License Board. If you are being asked for a big deposit on a big job, that is worth ten minutes of reading on their site before you pay anything.

Why this site is built like an estimate

Because the estimate is the part of the job where the trust is either established or lost, and it happens before anybody picks up a tool. Everything on these pages — the prices, the exclusions, the list of work I turn down — is the same document, written out in public.