Reading a quote
Reading a contractor quote before you sign it
A kitchen quote is a legal document wearing the clothes of an estimate. Reading it well means checking four things in order: what is actually written down, how you are asked to pay, whether the numbers make sense against a real derivation of your own kitchen, and whether anything about how it was presented to you should slow you down.
What has to be in writing, and why a verbal number is not a quote
FTC consumer guidance on hiring a contractor: get the scope of work and the cost in writing before any work begins.
Federal Trade Commission — How To Avoid a Home Improvement Scam — consumer.ftc.gov, how to avoid a home improvement scam
What it means for your kitchen A number said out loud on a walkthrough is not a quote and does not bind anyone to anything. If a figure you were told does not appear on the page in front of you, it is not part of the deal yet, however confident the conversation felt.
Any guarantee the contractor makes belongs in the same document: what is covered, who stands behind it and for how long. A verbal warranty is worth exactly as much as it is written down, which for most purposes is nothing.
Reading the scope line by line
A scope line should tell you the material, the brand or grade where one applies, the quantity, and whether installation and haul-away are included. "Cabinets, $18,000" is a price, not a scope. "Stock shaker cabinetry, 36 linear feet, soft-close hardware, installed, old cabinets hauled away" is a scope you can hold someone to. The takeoff tool gives you your own linear-foot figure to check that quantity against before you sign anything.
The payment schedule tells you almost as much as the total does
“Scammers ask you to pay for everything up front or only accept cash.”
Federal Trade Commission — How To Avoid a Home Improvement Scam — consumer.ftc.gov, how to avoid a home improvement scam
What it means for your kitchen Full payment up front removes the one lever you have if the work stalls or goes wrong: the money that was supposed to buy your leverage is already gone. A cash-only demand adds a second problem on top — no record of the amount, no way to reverse it, and no paper to dispute later.
Ask what each payment is tied to in the language of the schedule, not the calendar: "on delivery of cabinets" is checkable against a delivery, "in two weeks" is not checkable against anything. Some states regulate what a contractor may collect before work begins — this site has not sourced a specific figure, so confirm the actual limit, if any, with your state or local consumer protection agency rather than trusting a number from a search result.
Checking a quote against your own derivation, not against a feeling
The most useful question you can ask a bidder is rarely "why is the total so high." It is "what does that imply per linear foot, per square foot, or per hour," because a total by itself has nowhere to disagree with. This site exists to give you that per-unit number from your own kitchen before you ever see a bid.
- Divide the cabinet line by your derived linear feet, not by a guess. Two bidders quoting the same per-foot rate on different totals are usually disagreeing about quantity, not price.
- Divide the countertop line by your derived slab count, not the square footage alone. A bid needing one more slab than another is a real cost difference, not padding.
- Check whether plumbing and electrical figures account for a sink actually moving and the circuits your appliances need — a bid that is silent on both is a bid that has not looked at your layout yet.
- Run the whole scope through the project calculator with your own local unit prices and compare its labour share to the bid's labour line, where the bid breaks one out.
The bid comparison tool normalises several quotes against the same required scope so a lower total that is missing three trades stops looking like the better deal.
What should slow you down before you sign anything
“Get multiple estimates.”
Federal Trade Commission — How To Avoid a Home Improvement Scam — consumer.ftc.gov, how to avoid a home improvement scam
What it means for your kitchen One bid gives you a number. More than one gives you a range, and a range tells you when the low bid is a real price and when it is a foot in the door.
- A price that is only good today, or a pressure to sign before you have read the whole document.
- A contractor who cannot produce a license number or proof of insurance when asked directly.
- A deposit that is close to or exceeds what your state permits before work has started.
- A contract with blank fields, or one you are handed at the same appointment where financing is arranged.
- No fixed street address, or a business that exists mainly as a phone number and a truck.
The when-not-to page covers the harder version of this question — when the right answer is to slow the whole project down, not just switch contractors.
Sources for this page
- Federal Trade Commission, Consumer AdviceHow To Avoid a Home Improvement Scam — the written-contract guidance is paraphrased above; the payment-schedule and get-multiple-estimates lines are quoted directly.