“As discussed”: the most expensive phrase in residential construction

Every expensive renovation dispute I have watched unfold in 19 years shares the same opening line: “but we talked about this.” And the same response: “it's not in the quote.” Both people are telling the truth. That is what makes it ugly.

“As discussed” — and its cousins “as per our conversation” and “per site visit” — feels reassuring on a quote. It sounds like the contractor was listening. What it actually does is compress an hour-long walkthrough, full of maybes and options and “we could do this or that,” into two words that record none of it. Six months later, you remember the heated bathroom floor as a promise. The contractor remembers it as an option you never confirmed. There is no paper. There is only the argument.

Why this happens to honest people

It is worth saying clearly: “as discussed” is almost never a trap. It is a shortcut. Site visits are long, quotes get written at the kitchen table at 9 p.m., and summarizing ninety minutes of conversation into specific scope sentences is genuine work. The contractor isn't hiding the ball — they are deferring the work of writing it down. The problem is that deferred writing becomes disputed memory, and disputed memory becomes a change order argument with money on both sides.

The five-sentence fix

You do not need a lawyer. You need one email, sent before signing:

This email does three jobs at once. It converts your memory into a checkable list. It gives the contractor a friction-free way to correct misunderstandings now, when it costs nothing, instead of mid-project when it costs goodwill and money. And the written reply becomes part of the paper trail even if the quote itself never gets revised.

Watch the response. A professional answers item by item — some yes, some “that was an option, here's the price to add it.” That second kind of answer is not bad news; it is the dispute you just avoided having in month three. The only genuinely concerning response is resistance to writing anything down at all.

The broader rule

This is one instance of the principle that runs through everything we write about reading quotes: in Canadian residential construction the quote is typically one number and a scope description, which means the scope description is the entire project definition. Conversations are where projects get designed. Paper is where they get defined. Anything that matters to you must make the trip from one to the other before a deposit changes hands — because after that, the paper wins every argument.