Fixed price, honestly: how we cost a whole-home renovation

Every builder will tell you their price is fixed. The useful question is what it was fixed from. A price fixed from a sketch is a guess with a signature on it; a price fixed from a complete, engineered, approved set of drawings is a promise we can keep. We only give the second kind.

Five numbers, each tighter than the last

You hear a price from us five times. A range at the first meeting, from what you tell us and what we know of houses like yours. An estimate for each concept, so you choose between real options with the cost in view. A tighter estimate from the final drawings. A fixed-price quote once engineering and approvals are in hand. And the contract, which is the same number written into a Master Builders agreement.

Because the people who price the house are in the room where it is drawn, nothing in the design gets far before someone has costed it. That is the whole advantage of a design and build studio, and it is why the range narrows instead of jumping.

Where renovation budgets actually go wrong

Three places, in our experience. Allowances that were set too low to make a quote look good; latent conditions in an old house that get priced with a margin on top; and finishes chosen late, in a hurry, at retail. We set allowances from three real finish ranges, we add no markup to unexpected work or to your PC items, and we run an interior design phase at the start of the build so every finish is chosen before it is needed.

A first estimate, then, is not a lesser version of a quote. It is the tool that lets you make design decisions with money in view, so that by the time the number is fixed there is nothing left in it to surprise you.