[bsoles]

Anybody who worked with a local contractor knows that their estimate and the reality has no correlation.

When you ask for a firm estimate, you are basically asking to be lied to, and the contractor happily complies by telling you a lie.

[patrick451]

These are just bad contractors. I used to work for a remodeling company. We came in under time on the vast majority of projects because the guy who ran the company knew what he was doing and built slack into the schedule.