What it costs,
before you ask.
Build your renovation line by line from a 322-item cost library priced for your area. Every item shows the materials and the labour apart — so you can see, item by item, what hiring it out costs and what doing it yourself saves.
Every figure here is a planning number: a mid-range national average, adjusted for your area. Real contractor pricing varies — by the condition of your house, by what is behind the wall, by how busy the trade is that month — and a real quote will often include things this does not: permits, disposal, site protection, insurance, access and general conditions. Use this to know roughly what you are looking at and to ask better questions. Do not use it to argue with a builder’s price, and do not budget to the penny from it.
Describe it in a sentence
Say what you want done, in your own words — out loud if you would rather talk than type — and get a draft plan back to correct.
Materials and labour, apart
Every line carries both, priced separately. The one number a homeowner cannot get anywhere else is what the labour alone is worth.
Decide what you are doing yourself
Tick a line and the labour comes off it. Watch the total move as you take work on — that difference is what your weekends are worth.
Hand it to a contractor
Print it or email it. A builder reading a plan that already lists the work in trades is quoting, not guessing, which is faster for both of you.
$9 a month. Thirty days free, no card.
Renovations do not run monthly, so neither should the bill. Stop when the job is done and come back when the next one starts.