Stay behind the work.

No, and refusing to is the honest answer. Labour rates and material costs vary enormously by country, region and even by month, and there's no access to current local pricing — so any fair price range would be invented. A made-up benchmark is worse than none: it could lead you to reject a reasonable quote or accept a bad one. What you get instead is whether the quote is specific enough to hold anyone to, plus a comparison between your own real quotes.

Stay behind the work, never ahead of it. At any moment they should owe you work rather than you owing them money. Money paid before work exists is the money most likely never to be seen again — and legitimate businesses have supplier accounts rather than needing your cash to buy materials. A deposit covering materials actually ordered can be reasonable; half the total before anyone arrives is not. Some places cap home improvement deposits by statute.

Because cheap and vague usually travel together. When quotes differ wildly, the most common reason is that they're for different scopes, materials and standards rather than different profit margins — so the lowest is often lowest because it excluded things. The pattern to watch is underpricing to win the job, then recovering it through variations once your kitchen is in pieces. Being cheapest isn't a red flag by itself; being cheapest with no specification is.

Variations, not the original price. The fix is a written process agreed before anyone starts: nothing extra proceeds, and no additional cost is incurred, until it's been described in writing, priced, and agreed by both sides including the effect on the completion date. "We'll sort it at the end" is exactly how a fixed price becomes an open one — and mid-job discoveries in older properties are often genuine, which is precisely why the response needs to be decided in advance.

No, and it says so. It's a plain-English scope and payment summary to attach to whatever contract you use — covering the terms that most commonly go wrong: scope, materials specification, exclusions, dates, staged payments, retention, variations and insurance. Consumer protections, deposit limits and contract law differ substantially by country, so check what applies where you live, and for a large or structural job have a solicitor review the terms.