Will my remodel cost more than the estimate?

The bid was $40,000 — right up until demo day. Then the walls came open, and the number started growing.

You've heard that story. Maybe you've lived it. I'm Logan Anderson. I build in Franklin. This is how I keep that story out of your house.

Here's how the growing bid works. A contractor wants the job, so he bids it thin. Then demo day comes. Your kitchen's in the dumpster — and now you're stuck. "Found something behind the wall." "That wasn't in the bid." Five grand here. Three more there. You can't say no. Half your house is gone.

And sometimes it's not even a scheme. Sometimes he just guessed instead of doing the homework, and his guesses became your bills.

Either way, it lands on you at the exact moment you can't walk away.

Anybody can promise the price won't grow. Promises are what the last guy made. So let me show you the mechanism instead.

Don't take my word for it — check me. The screened porch we finished this spring: signed at $48,200. Final invoice: $48,200. Same number.

The kitchen before that one: signed at $61,800, finished $2,340 higher — because the owners upgraded their countertop mid-job, on paper, price in front of them before I ordered the slab. They weren't surprised by that number. They chose it.

That's the pattern: the final number is the contract number — unless you're the one who moved it.

Lock one: the price in your contract is locked. Not an estimate. Not a starting point. If lumber jumps next month, that's my problem. If framing runs three days long, that's mine too. I do the homework before I ever hand you a number — I call my framer, I price the material, I get eyes on the real conditions. That's why your proposal takes three business days instead of getting invented in your driveway. The homework is what makes the lock hold.

Lock two: allowances. Those are the only numbers in the contract that can move — and you're the one who moves them. An allowance is money I've set aside for a choice you haven't made yet. Your tile. Your fixtures. Each one's marked in the proposal with the dollar amount next to it. Pick under it, the difference comes back to you. Pick over it, you see the change in writing before I order anything. The budget's yours. I just guard it.

Lock three: change orders. Real houses hide real surprises — I won't pretend yours can't. Say we open your shower wall and the studs behind it are rotted from some old leak. Here's exactly what happens, every time. Photos go in your portal that morning. By afternoon you've got two priced options: patch the damaged studs — say that's $1,150 — my recommendation, because it fixes it fully. Or sister the whole wall — new lumber alongside every stud — $2,300, and I'd only push that if we'd found more damage. Then: nothing. No pressure call that night. You look at the photos, you sleep on it, and we decide together tomorrow. Not one cut gets made and not one dollar gets added until you approve it in the portal, in writing — and that holds whether the surprise is two thousand dollars or two hundred. There's no small-stuff exception, because "small" is how bills grow quietly.

And here's the part that matters most: the guy who bid thin needs that rot to be expensive — it's how he climbs back to his real number. I don't. My real number was on page two the whole time.

One more thing, since it's the first check you'd write. My deposit isn't a percentage I picked. It's the real cost of the first work — drawing your plan set and submitting it for permits — priced like every other line, and whatever it comes to is the deposit. So your first dollar buys a plan set and a permit application, not my goodwill.

That's the whole system. Price locked. Allowances yours. Nothing changes without your name on it. Even the first check buys a real thing. There's no door left for the number to sneak out of.

So if my proposal's in your inbox, here's what I'd do. Open it and find the allowances — they're marked, numbers right there. Those are the only dollars that can move, and you're the one holding them. If anything else looks like it could grow, call me and point at it — I'll walk you through it line by line.

Take your time. The price holds for thirty days, and that date's printed right on the proposal so you don't have to wonder — it's not a countdown on you, it's just how long my material and sub quotes stay good. After that I'd have to re-price it. I'd rather you be sure than fast.