Setting expectations before day one

It is 7:40 on a Tuesday and the homeowner is in her driveway asking why you are here. She thought you were starting Wednesday. Her car is parked where the ladder run has to go, the side gate is padlocked, and she wants to know whether the shutters are getting painted too, because she assumed they were.

None of that is a workmanship problem. It costs you the first hour of a three-day exterior, and the shutters question costs you an argument on the last day. Every one of them was answerable in a text message on Sunday.

The five blanks a customer fills in for you

A customer who does not know something rarely asks. They fill the blank with the most convenient guess and act on it. Five blanks show up on almost every residential job. Neither column below takes longer to say than the other — the one on the right just decides the question before the customer has to.

Timing is the one that goes wrong quietly: say "about a week" and they count Saturday. The right-hand column also gives the customer a chance to object while objecting is still free. Better to hear "actually I need the driveway until 9" on Sunday than at 7:40 Tuesday. Miss the last row and you get a fight over the final invoice.

The message that goes out 48 hours ahead

Send this in writing, not by phone. You want a record, and you want them able to re-read it.

Hi Dana — confirming Tuesday for the exterior repaint.

Two of us, arriving between 7:30 and 8:00, off site by 4:30. Three working days if the weather holds. If rain moves us, I'll text you by 7:00 a.m. that morning.

Before Tuesday: driveway clear, side gate unlocked, anything breakable off the deck rail. We'll use the outside outlet and spigot on the north wall. No need for anyone to be home.

Scope is what you approved: two coats on siding and trim, 2,380 sq ft. Shutters, garage door and the shed are not in the price — if you want the shutters, tell me by Wednesday and I'll send the $640 add-on for you to sign before we start it.

You'll get a photo at the end of each day. Anything urgent, text me. — Marcus, 555-0143

Four things: when, what you need, what is in and out, how you will talk. Write it once for your most common job type and swap the five details each time. About ninety seconds per job.

Ten minutes on the driveway before the ladder goes up

Some things only work in person.

• Walk the route. Where the truck sits, where material stages, which door you carry through. A staging spot you pointed at is one nobody complains about later.
• Photograph what is already broken. Cracked driveway, dinged gutter, scratched hardwood in the hallway. Dated photos taken before you start usually end that dispute in one message instead of one week.
• Say out loud what happens to their things. Patio furniture, the grill, the cars, the plants against the wall, the pets. Who moves what, and by when.
• Confirm the one contact. If two people live there, agree now which one answers questions, so you are not caught between a yes and a no.

Where your price stops and the next conversation starts

The last blank is the expensive one, and the fix is to price the likely surprise before you find it.

Every trade has a short list of things that turn up once the wall, the deck or the panel is open: rot behind siding, a cast-iron drain that crumbles, a circuit that was never grounded. You cannot say whether you will find it. You can say what it costs if you do. So put a unit price in the estimate for each one, billed only if found:

Sheathing replacement, if rot is found behind the siding: $95 per 4x8 sheet, installed. Billed only for sheets actually replaced, with photos.

The $95 is a placeholder showing the shape of the line, not a going rate. Price yours off your own material and labor cost.

Open that wall, find six bad sheets, and it is a six-sheet change order the customer approves in minutes — they agreed to the number in advance and the only new information is the count. Without the line, the same six sheets is a two-day standoff about whether you should have known.

Set the approval mechanics up front, and get them right for your state. Get written approval before the extra work starts, signed by whoever signed the contract. The person who answers day-to-day questions on site is not automatically the person who can authorize more money.

This is not only good practice. Several states regulate changes to residential home improvement contracts. California requires a change order in writing and signed by the parties before any work covered by it begins. New York requires the contract and every amendment to it to be in writing and signed by all parties. One more wrinkle if you sell an add-on at the customer's house: federal and state home-solicitation rules can give a buyer three business days to cancel a sale made at their home, and states differ on how that applies to a change order under an existing contract. Ask your state licensing board or consumer protection office, or a local construction attorney, before you decide a text message is enough where you work.

Put it on the document they approved

All of this only holds if it lives on the document the customer keeps and agrees to. Be careful which document that is. Many states set a dollar figure above which residential work needs a written contract carrying specific required terms — over $500 in California, over $1,000 in Massachusetts — and an approved estimate is not a substitute for it. Look up your own state's threshold and its required contract language. The licensing board or consumer protection office often publishes a sample contract.

The arrival window, the exclusions, the unit price for rot, the daily cleanup standard: same words in their inbox as in your head. DoneQuote builds that document from your own services and prices and lets the customer approve it digitally, so what you settled on the phone is what they signed off on, instead of two versions of one conversation.

You cannot stop the surprises on a jobsite. You can decide, before day one, which ones the customer has already agreed to the price of, and which ones they will hear about from you before they see them for themselves. That is most of what people mean when they say somebody is easy to work with.