What if the price changes partway through?

What a change order is, and what it is not

A change order is an amendment to the agreement. It says that the job is no longer exactly the job that was priced, describes the difference, states what the difference does to the money and to the dates, and is agreed by both sides before the work behind it happens.

That last clause is the whole of it. A document produced afterwards is not a change order; it is an invoice with an explanation attached, and by then your only options are to pay it or to argue about it. Neither is a decision, and a change order exists to give you a decision.

Change orders are not a sign that something has gone wrong. On renovation work in particular they are close to inevitable, because you are working on a building that has not told you everything about itself. What tells you whether a job is being run well is not how many there are. It is when you hear about them.

Where they come from

Something found when it was opened up

Rot, old wiring, a drain that does not fall, framing that is not what the drawing assumed. The most common source, and the most predictable one.

You changed your mind

Entirely legitimate, and the cheapest kind to make early. The same change asked for after the tiling is a different piece of work.

The town asked for something

An inspector's requirement, or a condition from a review. Not anyone's fault and not optional.

A material is not available

Discontinued, back-ordered, or arrived wrong. The substitution and its cost effect should both be written down, not just the substitution.

The drawing was wrong

It happens. Who carries that one depends on who produced the drawing, and it is worth knowing what the contract says about it before you need to.

A scope that was thin to begin with

The one to watch. A stream of changes for things that were always obviously going to be needed suggests the original number was not a real one.

What a good one says

It does not have to be long. It has to be specific.

What changed, in plain description. Why — found, requested, required. What work is being added or removed. What it does to the price, and whether that is fixed or an estimate. What it does to the schedule, including any knock-on to trades booked after it. And a space for both signatures, with a date, ahead of the work.

Where it is something found behind a wall, photographs belong with it. A change order that says "additional framing repair" with three pictures attached is a document you can still understand in a year; one that says it without them is a line you have to take on trust.

Keep them all together. At the end of a job the original scope plus the change orders is the description of what was actually built, and that is the document you want if there is ever a question about it.

When it is rot behind the wall

On Rhode Island's housing stock, finding something behind a wall happens often enough to be planned for rather than treated as a shock.

The order it should go in: you are shown what was found, told what it changes in time and in cost, and given the decision — instead of reading about it at the end. Photographs of anything opened up are worth asking for before the wall closes again, and a reasonable contractor offers them without being asked.

The way to make this go well is to agree the mechanism before anyone opens anything. How is additional sheathing or framing priced, and on what basis. What is the threshold above which work stops and you are consulted. Who calls whom, and how fast. Settling that when nobody is standing in a dusty room holding a torch is the difference between a straightforward conversation and a confrontation.

Agree the mechanism before anyone opens anything.

The one at the end is the bad one

There is a version of this that every homeowner has heard about and some have lived: the job finishes, and the final bill is larger than the agreement, and the explanation is a list of things that came up along the way.

That is not a change order process. It is a bill for decisions you were never given, and the reason it is worth being firm about is not the money on this job — it is that it only works because it is raised at the point where you have the least leverage and the most fatigue.

If it happens, say so immediately and in writing, before paying. Ask for the change order document for each item: what it was, when it was found, what was agreed and by whom. Where something genuinely was authorised in conversation, that is a fair discussion to have. Where it was not, saying so calmly on the day is far more effective than waiting and hoping it resolves.

How to make them rarer

Some of this is within your control, and the effort pays back several times over.

Make the decisions early and make them specific — fixtures by model, finishes selected, layout fixed before demolition. A large share of changes on an ordinary job are not discoveries at all; they are choices that were still open when the work reached them.

Let the investigation happen before the number is fixed. Opening a small area, pulling a panel, looking under a floor — an hour of that before the contract turns several guesses into facts.

And ask for the uncertainty to be named rather than buried. A contractor who tells you which three items in the scope are assumptions, and what happens if each turns out differently, is doing you a service. A contingency discussed openly is a better arrangement than a number that pretends nothing can be behind the wall.