Guide 4 of 8 · Signing and paying · Free
Contracts and Payments
The contract is where your protection lives or dies. This guide walks through deposits, payment schedules, change orders, and lien waivers, so you pay for work as it is done and never lose the leverage you started with.
Free to read. Free to download. Print the toolkit pages for the kitchen table.
What is inside
- 1The contract is the rulebook
- 2Contract types, and the time-and-materials clause inside most of them
- 3Scope, change orders, and special-order materials
- 4Payment structures: what is normal, what is risky, and the one diagram to remember
- 5Liens, lien waivers, and the timing gap they exist for
- 6Cancellation rights, cooling-off periods, and when walking away protects you
- 7When things go wrong: the record that protects you
- 8The contract checklist
The toolkit pages
- Payment Schedule
- Lien Waiver Tracker
Printable and fillable. Built to be used at the kitchen table, not read on a screen.
What this guide protects you from
Paying ahead of the work, and finding out what "we will take care of it" meant.
Look inside
Sample pages from this guide
A few pages as they appear in the PDF, including a drawing and a toolkit page. Tap a page to see it larger.
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Start where you are
Your first big repair on your own
Your first roof, siding or window project on your own: where to start, the questions to ask, what a contract should say, and how payments should move.
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Guide 5: Installation Quality