What a real change order contains
One page, before the work happens: what's changing and why (with photos for discovered conditions), the price of the change, the schedule impact in days, and both signatures. It amends the contract; the contract's total adjusts by exactly that amount. That's the entire mechanism, and its power is when it happens: before, never after.
The two species of change
- Client changes: you upgrade the tile, add a pot light, move a door. Simple: priced, signed, scheduled.
- Discovered conditions: the rot behind the shower, the ungrounded wiring, the missing beam. Legitimate versions come with photographs, an explanation you can follow, and a price consistent with the contract's unit costs. In century homes these are expected and should already live inside a named contingency, as described in the century-home playbook.
"My test for a discovery is simple: I photograph it before I touch it, I price it standing in front of you, and the number uses the same math as the original quote. If a contractor's discoveries are always urgent, always vague and always expensive, those aren't discoveries. That's the business model."
Mitch Fraser, owner, Ontario Contracting Co.
How the law backs you
The Consumer Protection Act caps the final price at 10% above the written estimate unless you agreed in writing to additional work or a new price. Read that carefully: the signed change order IS the written agreement the Act contemplates. No signature, no enforceable extra. This is why the low-ball-then-escalate pattern documented in the bait-and-switch playbook depends on homeowners approving changes verbally in a hallway; the paper requirement is your firewall.
Practical rules
- Nothing proceeds on a verbal "go ahead", ever, including from your spouse in passing
- Keep a running change-order log with the adjusted contract total after each one
- Watch cumulative creep: many small changes are how budgets die politely
- A thorough original scope, clause two of the contract checklist, is the best change-order prevention ever written