Source: Home: The Second Story podcast, Mailbag 3 episode — Sheri Scott (Springhouse Architects) & Marilyn Moedinger (Runcible Studios)
How complete should my plans be before I ask a builder to price my project?
The more finished your drawings are, the narrower and more accurate your pricing gets — and that accuracy costs time and money to produce. Early on, expect a broad range based on square footage; that’s normal, and it’s useful for decision-making even though it’s not a number you can build a contract on. At Springhouse, we price in stages on purpose — an early estimate with nothing drawn yet, a number after preliminary design, a tighter number at the pricing set — so you get a checkpoint to course-correct at every stage instead of a single number too early or too late.
Think of it like filling a shopping cart before you check out. Early on, we put everything into the drawings and the outline spec — every option you’re considering — and price all of it. That total is often more than you expected, and that’s fine; nothing’s been spent yet. From there, you take things out with real information instead of guessing what might be over budget. Renovation work tends to need more of this back-and-forth than new construction, because there’s more unknown behind existing walls; on a new build, we can usually guide you closer to a realistic number sooner, since it’s grounded in our own portfolio of completed projects.
The right amount of detail before pricing isn’t the same for every client — it depends on how much uncertainty you can tolerate before you feel comfortable moving forward. Some clients are fine with a ballpark and want to keep momentum; others need every line item defined before they can commit, and that level of detail is available, it just costs more to produce. Neither is wrong. What matters is being honest with your architect about which one you are, so the process gets built around you instead of a generic timeline.