01
Approved verbally
Agreed in the driveway, built that afternoon, priced next month. Two people remember it differently and the one holding the invoice wins.
Change orders: what triggers one and what a fair one looks like
A change order amends a contract you have already signed. Five situations legitimately produce one, four lines have to be printed on it, and one kind of change order tells you the original bid was thin.
- Published
- 6 October 2026
- Subject
- Contract mechanics
- Applies to
- Any signed remodel contract
- Faster than reading
- (775) 200-0648, Monday to Friday, 9:00 AM to 4:00 PM
01What it is
A change order is an amendment to the contract, not a line on the final invoice.
The contract you sign has three moving parts: a scope that says what is being built, a price, and a schedule. A change order is the document that amends all three at once. It is not a bill, not an email, and not a conversation in the driveway: it is a numbered page that joins the agreement the moment both signatures are on it.
That distinction is the whole protection, because a change order is the only mechanism by which the number you agreed to is allowed to move. If work is performed first and the cost surfaces afterwards, described as an overage, then no amendment ever happened. The order of operations is what makes it fair: describe, price, sign, then build.
Every remodel produces at least one, and that is not a planning failure. It is what happens when a forty-year-old wall is opened, and it is the same reason what a remodel costs in Reno and Sparks is written as a range rather than a single price. So the question to ask a contractor is not whether there will be change orders, but what has to be true before one is put in front of you. What follows is also a checklist for a contractor you have already hired.
02What triggers one
Five situations legitimately raise a change order. Everything else is a conversation.
Each one produces a different document, and the artifact you receive is how you tell which situation you are actually in.
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01
A concealed condition
Something behind the finish is not what the bid assumed: rot at a sill plate, a beam carrying load that no drawing shows. Nobody priced it because nobody could see it. You get a photograph, a written description and a price before anyone proceeds
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02
You change the scope
The most common trigger and the least contentious. You stand in the framed room and decide the opening should be wider. That is a purchase, and it gets priced like one. You get the added work described in your words, with whatever it displaces
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03
The reviewing authority requires something
A correction notice is not an opinion. Where a plan reviewer or an inspector requires an item the permit set did not show, the work is not optional and the cost is real. You get the correction notice attached to the change order
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04
A selection is unavailable
The door style is discontinued, the tile is nine weeks out, the appliance was superseded. A substitution moves the price either way, and often the schedule further still. You get the substitute named by model number, with the difference either way
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05
An allowance reconciles
An allowance is a placeholder for a decision you had not made yet. When you make it, the real quoted number replaces it, frequently in your favour. You get the actual quote set against the allowance the contract carried
03What has to be on it
Four lines. A change order missing any one of them is not finished.
- Line one
- The work, in both directionsWhat is added and what is removed. A change order that only adds is usually incomplete: if a wall moves, something that was going to be built there is not.
- Line two
- The price, and where it came fromSubcontractor quote, material cost, labour hours at a stated rate, and the markup your contract already said would apply. If it never stated one, ask before you sign.
- Line three
- The schedule, in daysDays added, or a line saying the schedule is unaffected. Silence is what gets produced later to explain a finish date nobody agreed to.
- Line four
- Two signatures and a dateSigned by both parties before the work is performed. That single ordering rule prevents most of the disputes that go anywhere.
One more thing worth knowing before the first one arrives: a change order can be refused. Where the change is your own idea, refusing it means the contract stands as written. Where it came from a reviewing authority or from what was found inside a wall, refusing the paper does not make the condition go away: it stops the job while both parties work out what happens instead.
04The document itself
It is a page of the contract, so it should look like a page of the contract.
The study beside this text is the shape of the form: a serial number, the work described in both directions, the price with its derivation shown rather than asserted, the days it moves the schedule, and two signature lines with a date. If a cell cannot be filled in, the change order is not ready to sign.
We number them and use the same form every time, because the fifth change order has to be readable next to the first. At close-out you should be able to lay the contract and every amendment side by side and account for the difference between the figure you signed and the figure you paid. Ask any contractor to show you a blank one before you sign anything.
- CHANGE ORDER No.
- DATE
- WORK ADDED / WORK REMOVED
- DERIVATION
- AMOUNT
- OWNER
- CONTRACTOR
- DAYS
05What a bad one looks like
Six patterns worth refusing, and what to ask for instead.
02
Time and materials, open ended
“We will track it and see where it lands” is not a price. Where a scope cannot be priced until it is opened, ask for a not-to-exceed figure and a rule for reaching it.
03
Silent on schedule
A price with no day count is half a document. Two weeks of added work is two more weeks of living in a house that is open.
04
Five items, one number
Unrelated changes in a single lump sum cannot be evaluated or refused individually, which is usually the point. Ask for them separated.
05
Priced after the work
Once the framing is in, your leverage is gone. The remedy is procedural: agree at signing that no change proceeds without a signature.
06
Work that was always in scope
The one that tells you something. If a change order covers what the drawings plainly showed, the original number was low on purpose. This is where three bids thousands apart usually resolve.
06Where they come from
The number of change orders on a job is mostly decided before construction starts.
Change orders are produced by unresolved decisions, and unresolved decisions are cheap to settle on paper and expensive to settle on site. That is the practical case for planning a Reno remodel decision by decision before anyone signs. A job that goes to contract with dimensioned drawings, a selections list carrying model numbers rather than adjectives, and allowances set against real quotes has already eliminated most of the second category above. Where a house is old enough that its structure is a guess, open something during design (a small exploratory opening, patched the same day), so an unknown becomes a line item instead of a surprise.
Three pages here set out how that works: how a job runs, with the artifact each phase closes with; the remodel cost calculator, which prints its assumptions rather than burying them; and our service lines. If the project is an accessory dwelling unit, plan review is its own source of changes. See how the three local authorities each review an ADU. And if the answer to a change order is “another two weeks”, read what those two weeks are actually like before you sign it.
07Questions
Three questions that arrive once the first change order is on the table.
Yes, and the consequence depends on where it came from. If it is your own addition, refusing it means the contract stands as written. If it came from a concealed condition or from a correction required by the reviewing authority, refusing the paper does not remove the condition. It stops the job while both parties work out a different answer. That is why the price and the day count belong in front of you before the work happens.
It should say so explicitly. A draw schedule, the list of part-payments released as each stage of the job finishes, is tied to milestones, so added work normally attaches to the draw for the phase it belongs to rather than becoming a separate immediate invoice. What you want to avoid is a change order that quietly creates a payment due on signature for work that will not be performed for six weeks.
You go back to the contract documents, and whoever wrote the scope carries the weakness in it. That is the practical reason a scope should be a line-item list against a drawing set rather than a paragraph: an argument about a numbered line is short. Where a genuine ambiguity exists, the fair reading is the one that favours the party who did not draft the wording.
09Start a conversation
Send us the change order. We will tell you what is missing from it.
You do not have to be our client. If one has landed in front of you and you cannot tell whether it is fair, describe it: what it covers, what it costs, what it says about the schedule. We will tell you which of the four lines is missing and what to ask for.
Fastest way to reach us
(775) 200-0648
Monday to Friday, 9:00 AM to 4:00 PM. A person answers, and it is somebody who has written one. The form goes to the same place, one business day behind the phone.
Question received.
We will call you back within one business day with the answer for your address. If you would rather not wait, call (775) 200-0648 now. We answer Monday to Friday, 9:00 AM to 4:00 PM.