How to Write a Construction Quote, With a Worked Example

The homeowner wants an 8-foot opening in the wall between the kitchen and the living room. The walkthrough is already over, tape back in the truck, the outlet still sitting on the studs. The quote has to name what is included, what stays out, and what happens if that wall is hiding a duct or a pipe, before anyone in the kitchen asks for a number.

How do you write a construction quote?

Write the scope first, then break the job into lines in the order of the work, quantity times the unit times your unit price. Add the lines people forget, write the exclusions and the assumptions as sentences, set a validity of 30 days and a deposit, and send the quote the same day as the walkthrough.

The wall opening is 8 feet wide in a load-bearing partition, wood frame, drywall on both faces, kitchen on one side and the living room on the other. The LVL header runs 10 feet, 8 feet of opening plus a foot of bearing on each jack, and that length is what gets ordered. A short bearing shows up when the header actually takes the load and the top plate crushes under the end. My prices, before tax.

Scope before the first number

You can say the scope out loud while you are still standing on the oak floor, before a single price hits the page. The work is an 8-foot opening in the load-bearing wall, an LVL header with jack and king studs, and a drywall patch on both faces. The price includes dust protection, temporary shoring, debris haul-away and final cleanup. Moving the outlet on that wall sits outside those sentences, at 180, if they want it moved to the next stud bay.

The assumption goes on the quote in words a homeowner can read back.

"We are treating this as an empty wall, no duct and no plumbing. If the demo finds either, we stop, and a written change order goes out before any more of the wall comes down."

The exclusions get their own sentences.

"The structural engineer’s letter and the header sizing sit outside this quote. The header we install follows that letter."

"Paint on both faces stays off this quote."

"Permit fees stay with the homeowner."

A line that says "framing work", or "frame and drywall", is a blank check, not a scope. The homeowner hears paint, the permit and the engineer inside those words, because to them the wall means the finished opening. The argument starts when the mud is dry and the room still smells like joint compound. That is the morning a coat of paint would burn a day nobody priced.

The engineer’s letter is almost never in hand the evening of the walkthrough, and the header length already is. I send the wall opening with that length, the bearings and the sentence about the letter, then I revise the section when the letter shows up.

The wall opening, line by line

The lines follow the job, from the plastic on the floor to the last pass with the broom. Demo is 8 linear feet at 30, so 240. The header is 10 feet, 8 plus a foot of bearing on each jack, at 48 a foot, so 480. Drywall patch, tape and mud, is 26 linear feet on the header and both jambs, both faces, at 9, so 234. Cleanup is 2 hours at 55, so 110.

Total before tax: 1,789.

A homeowner with a calculator divides 480 by 10 and gets 48. A lot price is the right frame for protection, shoring, haul-away and cleanup. On the header I stay by the foot, because a missing foot of bearing vanishes inside a lot price and shows up the morning the LVL is an inch short of the jack.

Relocating the outlet stays at 180, off that total. If they want it moved, it goes on the quote. If they keep it, 1,789 stays put. I leave that move off the framing line, so a homeowner who keeps the outlet is not paying for work that will not happen.

The tax depends on where the job is and on the work.

The masonry quote template gives the usual wall lines. The opening keeps its own takeoff.

The lines people forget

On the wall opening, protection, shoring, haul-away and cleanup are already lines, said during the walkthrough. On the quote typed at 9 p.m. they are the first to vanish. You do them on every job, so you forget to write them, and the total looks tidy while a morning of labor is missing. Before I send, I walk this list.

• Dust wall and floor protection, already priced on the wall opening, and the line to copy onto the next house where the sofa stays in the room.
• Temporary shoring on both sides, set and strike included, even when you own the posts, because the morning spent plumbing them is labor on this wall.
• Debris haul-away, dumpster or trailer, plus a place to park it when the curb in front of the door is no good.
• Access, parking and scaffold, including the permit when the dumpster sits in a parking lane.
• Final cleanup, the hours you always work and almost never write on the quote.
• Moving whatever is fastened to the wall, the outlet, a cabinet, a sconce, on its own line or held apart from the opening.
• Consumables, blades, screws, mud and plastic, which leave your stock and never show up on a receipt the homeowner will see.

A dumpster with nowhere to sit adds a permit or a parking spot the wall opening total never carried. That miss is on you.

Validity, deposit and changes

I use 30 days.

Lumber moves, and the LVL with it, and 48 a foot left open for 6 weeks is not the lumberyard’s number on the morning you order. If the yard sends a new sheet 3 weeks in, the old foot-price stops, even when the homeowner calls to say they were fine with it. After those 30 days I reprice before the header gets ordered.

Write the deposit on the quote, in words, before anyone signs. Some states cap the deposit on a home improvement job, so the figure has to be the one allowed where the house sits. I check that cap before I print a percentage out of habit from the last state I worked.

Once that deposit on the wall opening is agreed, SHAPP turns the signed quote into the deposit invoice. The progress invoice follows while the opening is still unfinished. The final invoice follows when the patch is done. Peppol e-invoicing is included.

If demo finds a duct, a yes shouted over the saw changes nothing until the change order is signed. You measure, you write the change order, they sign, and only then does the saw go back on. The kitchen is open, the range is under plastic, and the push to "just move it while you are in there" is exactly how an unsigned line becomes free labor.

Mandatory wording on a quote changes with the country. The shared core is the company name and number, the customer, the job site address, the date, the validity, the detailed lines, the price, and a duration or a start date. The exact list gets checked once with an accountant or a trade group. A homeowner who signs at the house gets 3 business days to cancel under the FTC Cooling-Off Rule, for a sale of $25 or more made at the buyer’s home, and 14 days in the UK and Ireland, where work starts inside that window only if the customer asks for it.

3 ways to produce the quote

The same wall can leave the walkthrough as a quote in 3 ways, and each one costs time or a miss of its own. The quoting software comparison sets those ways next to each other, from what each company publishes.

A bid built from drawings, half a day at the desk, belongs in a full quoting program, where saved items and templates earn their keep across a long takeoff. A quote written on the way back to the truck, the wall still in your head, is the one I give to Shappy.

If the walkthrough was booked in WhatsApp, the photo of the wall is already in that chat, with the address and the time, and the quote comes back in the thread. Sending it the same day, measurements still on the phone, is covered in writing an estimate on site.

The wall-opening quote with Shappy

In the truck, the voice note goes to Shappy on WhatsApp. The note goes in this order: width, height, a 10-foot header with the bearings, 26 linear feet of tape and mud, shoring, haul-away and cleanup. A text tapped at the light, the same figures in 2 lines, takes the same path. A photo of the wall, tape still against the studs, can go with those 2 lines, and that path is the photo-to-quote one. Say the figures in that order, width, then height, then header. How to say them so the draft lands right is in AI voice quotes for contractors.

Shappy pulls the prices from the price library. I read every line, and I read the margin, which the homeowner never sees. If the drywall patch comes back at 16 linear feet when the note said 26, the total still looks like a wall quote, and the margin is the line that looks wrong. The exclusions written in the living room go into the notes. The outlet goes on as an option, take it or leave it. Read it before it sends.

The PDF or the share link follows that read, through the construction quote on WhatsApp. The homeowner and the company sign on the screen. If the engineer changes the header size after the letter, the revision picks up this same quote, new section, same scope, same assumption that the wall was empty. Nothing goes out until you approve it.

If they read the quote and go quiet, the follow-up stays in that chat, and the timing is in following up a quote on WhatsApp.

Before the next quote, write the exclusions before the prices. A structural quote, header and exclusions included, starts as a trial from the pricing page.