There is a line that shows up in the middle of most remodeling proposals, and it looks harmless. It reads something like Tile allowance, followed by a number. That number was chosen before anyone selected a tile. Before anyone knew whether the shower wall would be a simple stacked field or a pattern that consumes more material and considerably more labor to set. It is a placeholder wearing the clothes of a price.
Weeks later, in a showroom, the real selection gets made. The number moves. It rarely moves down. And that moment — a placeholder becoming a real cost, after a contract has already been signed — is the most common reason a remodel ends up costing more than a homeowner was told at the beginning.
We built our process specifically so that moment does not happen. That is what a fixed-price bid is for, and it is the reason we design a project completely before we price it.
What is a fixed-price bid, exactly?
A fixed-price bid is a single number that covers a fully described scope of work. Not a range. Not a starting point. Not a per-square-foot figure multiplied by your kitchen. It is the price we will build your project for, written against a set of drawings and a selection list that has already been made, reviewed, and signed off on.
The important word is described. A price is only as fixed as the scope underneath it. If the scope says “cabinetry” and nothing more, no number attached to it means anything, because the person writing it and the person reading it are picturing two different kitchens. If the scope names the cabinet line, the door style, the finish, the box construction, the specific interior fittings, the count and the dimensions, then the number is real. It can be checked. It can be held.
So the honest answer to “how do you give a fixed price?” is not that we are braver than other firms about numbers. It is that we do not attempt a number until we know what we are building. That sequence — design first, then price — is the whole mechanism.
Why can’t anyone give me a real price before the design is done?
Because the design is where the cost lives.
Two kitchens of identical square footage in the same 1920s Gatewood bungalow can differ enormously in cost, and almost none of that difference is visible from a walkthrough. One keeps the sink on the exterior wall. One moves it to the island, which means a new drain line cut through the floor framing and a vent run up through two levels. One keeps the wall between kitchen and dining. One removes it, which means a structural evaluation, a beam, posts carried down to bearing, and a permit. One reuses the existing electrical panel. One does not, because the panel is full and the new induction range and the new lighting circuits will not fit.
None of those decisions have been made at the point where most firms produce a number. So the number is a guess dressed up in a spreadsheet, and every one of those decisions is a place where the guess can quietly fail. When people say a remodel “went over budget,” this is almost always what happened: the budget was never a budget. It was an opening position.
We would rather do the work that makes a real number possible. Our design and remodeling process exists to resolve every one of those decisions on paper, in a room with you, before a single crew is scheduled.
What is an allowance, and why don’t we use them?
An allowance is a placeholder number inserted into a proposal for something that has not been chosen yet — tile, countertops, plumbing fixtures, lighting, hardware. The proposal looks complete. There is a total at the bottom. But some of the line items are not prices at all; they are IOUs.
The trouble with allowances is not that they are dishonest. Plenty of good builders use them because they are pricing a project that has not been designed, and an allowance is the only tool available in that situation. The trouble is what they do to you. They move the financial risk of every unmade decision onto the homeowner, and they move it to the worst possible moment: the middle of construction, when your kitchen is already gone, the crew is already on site, and saying no to the tile you love means starting a selection process over while the schedule waits.
That is not a fair position to put someone in. So we do not price with allowances. Every selection that carries cost is made during design, priced at its real cost, and written into the bid. When you sign, you are not signing a total with soft spots in it. You have already stood in our West Seattle studio and chosen the tile, seen the cabinet door in your own light, and approved the fixture schedule.
What does a fixed price not cover?
We will not tell you there are no surprises, because in a house built in 1926 that would be a lie. Here is the honest boundary.
A fixed price covers everything we can know. In an older Seattle house, we work hard to make that as much as possible: we open exploratory areas where it is sensible, we look at the crawlspace and the attic, we check what the panel can carry, we look for knob-and-tube in the walls we intend to disturb, we trace where the plumbing actually runs rather than where it should run. Most of what would have been a “surprise” gets found during design, when the fix is a drawing revision rather than a stopped job.
What a fixed price cannot cover is a genuinely concealed condition — rot in a sill plate nobody could see without demolition, a previous owner’s undocumented framing change, an unmarked abandoned line. When one of those appears, it is a change order, and we will show you exactly what it is, what it costs, and what it does to the schedule before anything proceeds. The difference between that and a drifting estimate is that this is rare and specific, not a structural feature of how the project was priced. If you want to see how the two documents differ on the page, we go through it in detail in our post on how a bid differs from an estimate.
How do I know the price is actually fixed?
Read the scope, not the total. A fixed price is only trustworthy if the document behind it is specific enough to argue with. Ours names materials by manufacturer and model. It names quantities. It names who is responsible for what, including the parts most proposals leave silent — permit coordination through SDCI, protection of the fir floors in the rest of the house, dust containment, daily cleanup, final punch. If you are comparing proposals from several firms, the useful exercise is not lining up the totals; it is asking of each one, what would have to be true for this number to change? We wrote a full breakdown of what belongs inside a remodel bid for exactly that comparison.
Twenty years of doing this in Seattle has taught us that homeowners are not actually asking for the lowest number. They are asking to be able to plan. A number you can plan around is worth more than a number that is merely low, and the only way to produce one is to design the project first.
If you have a proposal in front of you with allowances in it and you are not sure what you are actually agreeing to, bring it to us — we are glad to walk you through what those lines will likely do. And if you are earlier than that, a design consultation with NOR Design & Construction is where the real number starts: we design your project completely, then hand you one price you can build a plan around. Book a consultation or call 206.979.3420.
