Three contractors walk through your Buena Vista kitchen. Three proposals land in your inbox. One of them is noticeably lower than the other two — sometimes by a lot. It’s tempting to take it. Sometimes it’s a legitimately sharper bid from a leaner operation. In our experience, though, a bid that’s far below the others is often not a lower price. It’s a lower starting point, and the rest of the money arrives later, one change order at a time.
This post explains what a change order actually is, why some are legitimate, how an incomplete bid ends up generating them, and how to compare proposals so the number you sign is the number you pay — unless you choose to add scope. Salem Builders is a licensed North Carolina general contractor (License L.86773) based in Winston-Salem, and we work on renovations, kitchens, baths, and additions across Forsyth and Davie counties. What follows is the conversation we have with homeowners in Clemmons, Advance, and the older Winston-Salem neighborhoods whenever they’re comparing bids.
A change order is a written amendment to a construction contract that changes the scope, the price, the schedule, or all three. It’s a normal contract tool, and it exists for good reasons. If you decide halfway through a bathroom remodel that you’d also like the hall bath done, that’s new work, and a change order is how it gets priced and added.
The problem isn’t the tool. The problem is that change orders can also be used to correct a price that was never realistic in the first place. Once your kitchen is gutted and the cabinets are on order, you are not in a position to walk away. A change order presented at that point is very hard to push back on.
It helps to sort change orders into two buckets, because they look identical on paper and feel very different in practice.
You upgraded from a standard range hood to a custom one. You added a pot filler after the plumber was already there. You saw the framing for the new porch in Advance and decided you wanted it four feet deeper. These are your decisions, made with your eyes open, and paying for them is fair. A good contractor prices them clearly, in writing, before doing the work, and tells you what they do to the schedule.
This is where the low bid earns its reputation. The work was always going to be needed — the contractor just didn’t price it. A few patterns come up over and over:
Much of the housing we’re asked to remodel wasn’t built recently. West End, Ardmore, and Buena Vista in Winston-Salem have homes that have been standing for many decades. Even the “newer” neighborhoods in Clemmons and the golf-course communities around Advance are often thirty-plus years old. Houses of that age tend to have things behind the walls that a contractor either plans for or doesn’t:
None of that is exotic. An experienced contractor walking a 1960s Ardmore ranch generally has a good idea what’s likely to be there, and a thorough bid reflects it. A bid that assumes a clean, modern house behind old plaster is usually the low one — and usually the one that generates change orders.
When proposals differ by a wide margin, the useful question is not “who is cheapest” but “what is each bid actually promising.” Here’s how we suggest homeowners work through it.
Make a simple list of every task the project needs: demolition, permits, framing, plumbing, electrical, drywall, tile, cabinets, counters, fixtures, paint, cleanup, haul-away. Check each bid against it. The gaps are where your change orders will come from.
Ask each contractor what their allowance figures would actually buy. A tile allowance that only covers builder-grade ceramic is not the same as one that covers the porcelain you’ve been looking at. If a bid’s allowances are consistently lower than the others, mentally add the difference back in.
Most proposals have an exclusions section. It’s usually short and near the end, and it’s the most important paragraph in the document. If permits, engineering, dumpster fees, or “any work not specifically listed above” are excluded, you’re looking at a partial price.
Every contractor has a policy, whether or not it’s written down. Ask directly: “If you open the wall and find something, what happens to my price?” The answer tells you more about the final cost than the number on the front page does.
Talk to references and ask a specific question: how far did the final invoice land from the original contract? A contractor whose projects routinely finish well above the signed price is telling you what your project will do. It’s a fair question to put to anyone bidding your job, including us — our reviews page is a good place to start.
Because “fixed price” gets used loosely, here is how Salem Builders defines it. The price on our contract is the price you pay, unless you choose to add scope. We don’t issue change orders for things we should have seen, planned for, or priced. A change order happens only if you choose to add scope — the pot filler, the hall bath, the deeper porch. That’s it.
Doing that responsibly requires more work up front. We walk the actual house before we price it. We look at the panel, the crawl space, the attic, the age of the plumbing. We write a scope that names each task instead of hiding behind “as needed.” And we price for what a home of that age and type typically has behind the walls, rather than pretending it won’t be there. That can make our number look higher than a bare-bones bid on day one. It also means the number doesn’t move unless you add scope.
We back the schedule the same way. Our On-Time Completion Guarantee credits $500 per week off the final invoice if the project runs past the agreed completion date for reasons within our control, in writing. And every Friday you get a written update with photos, so you always know where the project stands and what’s coming next. You can read how the whole process works, from first walkthrough to final punch list, on our process page.
Change orders can appear on any project, but three types generate more than their share.
Kitchens. A kitchen remodel touches every trade in the house, and allowances for cabinets, counters, and appliances give a low bid plenty of places to hide. In our experience, cabinet and countertop allowances are the most common source of “overages” on a kitchen.
Bathrooms. Water damage near tubs and showers is one of the most predictable discoveries in an older home. A bid that treats a rotted subfloor under a 1980s tub in Clemmons as an unforeseen condition may not fully reflect the conditions that are common in older homes.
Additions. An addition is where excluded items get expensive: site work, engineering, tying into an existing roof, matching exterior materials that have weathered for decades, and the electrical service upgrade that a larger house often needs. Ask specifically whether each of those is in the number.
We won’t print prices here, because a number in a blog post would be a placeholder rather than a quote. Every project is different — scope, finish level, and the condition of the house all move the figure, sometimes substantially. What we will say is that when homeowners bring us a competing bid that’s far lower, the gap usually narrows once allowances are set realistically and the exclusions are added back. Sometimes it disappears. The way to know what your project will actually cost is to get a fixed-price estimate for your actual scope, from someone who has walked the house.
Since 2021 we’ve completed more than 136 projects across the Triad, and the ones that finish closest to the original number all start the same way: a walkthrough before anyone talks price. We offer a free on-site consultation, respond to inquiries within two hours, and we’re typically booked four to six weeks out, which is worth knowing if you’re planning to have a project underway before the end of the year.
If you’re comparing bids for a project in Winston-Salem, Clemmons, Advance, or anywhere else in our service area, book your free on-site consultation here. We’ll walk the house, write a scope that names every task, and put a fixed price on it — in writing.