Home Assistant

Two engineers, one bathroom remodel, and a stubborn question. Why is it so hard to know what a home project should actually cost? Denver, CO. DENVER, CO · EST. SPRING 2023 · NO INVESTORS Spring of 2023. One of us was gutting a small upstairs bathroom in a 1950s bungalow in Denver. New tub surround, floor tile, a simple vanity, some drywall patching. Nothing exotic. We called five contractors. Same photos, same measurements, same written description, all of them. The low quote came in at $4,100 . The high quote came in at $19,800 . Same scope. Same zip code. Same week. So we spent the next three weeks on the phone with tile suppliers, reading pro forums at night, and grilling a friend who runs a small GC shop in Golden, until we were sure the honest price for that job was about $6,800 . Two of the quotes we got were basically fair. Three were wild. And there was no tool anywhere between "Pinterest board" and "spend a Saturday babysitting five guys at your house" that could have told us any of that upfront. So we made one for the next homeowner in the same spot. That is the whole origin story. No disruption. No pivot. No deck.