What Is a Change Order, and When Should You Refuse One?
Some are unavoidable and honest. Some are a price correction wearing a costume.
A change order is a written amendment to the contract. It records something that has changed about the scope, the price or the schedule, and it is signed by both of you before the work it describes gets done.
Nevada made this a requirement rather than good practice. NRS 624.970, in force since October 2023, obliges a residential contractor to document alterations to the scope or the price in writing. That gives you something concrete to hold, and it puts the awkward conversation before the work instead of on the invoice.
What a change order has to tell you
What changed, in plain words
A sentence a stranger could follow. “Relocate laundry standpipe 4 feet to west wall” is a description. “Additional plumbing” is not.
Why it changed
Concealed condition, your request, a design correction, or a supplier problem. This one line determines who should reasonably pay, so a blank space here is doing work for somebody.
The full cost, itemized
Labor, material and any equipment, separately. A single lump sum with no breakdown cannot be checked against anything.
The effect on the schedule
Days added or none. Changes that add time and say nothing about it are how a finish date quietly slips without anyone admitting it moved.
The new contract total
Not just the delta. Seeing the running total on every change order is what stops six small ones adding up to a number nobody noticed.
Signatures before the work
Signed by both parties in advance. A change order presented after the fact is an invoice, and it has removed your only opportunity to say no.
The ones that are legitimate
Concealed conditions come first and they are genuinely nobody fault. You cannot see inside a wall until it is open. Old galvanized supply pipe behind a bathroom, aluminum branch wiring, a slab that turns out to be four inches lower than the house floor, framing that was never right: these are found rather than caused, and they cost what they cost. In houses from the boom years the common ones are plumbing that was value-engineered, and framing shortcuts that only matter once you start removing things.
Owner requests are the second honest category, and they are the largest by volume. You see the space framed and want the opening wider. You change the tile after seeing the sample on the wall rather than in the store. Nothing wrong with any of it, provided each one arrives on paper with a number attached before the crew acts on it.
Third are the ones driven from outside: a plan reviewer requiring something, an inspector calling for a correction, a supplier discontinuing a product mid-order. Fair, documentable, and worth asking to see the underlying notice for.
The ones to refuse
Three patterns are worth pushing back on, and none of them requires you to be adversarial about it.
The first is work that was always going to be needed and should have been priced. If the estimate covered a bathroom remodel and the change order is for removing the old tile, that is not a change, that is the job. This is the most common form of a low bid correcting itself once you are committed and the demolition has started.
The second is anything vague. Refuse to sign a line that says “additional carpentry as required” with a number after it. Not because the work is not real, but because the description gives you no way to know when it has been done or what happens if it takes twice as long. Ask for it rewritten with a scope you could hold somebody to.
The third is a change order that should have been an allowance reconciliation. If the contract carried a figure for fixtures and you chose fixtures above it, the correct document reconciles the allowance against the actual cost, showing both numbers. Presenting the whole cost of the fixtures as new work is a different arithmetic and a more expensive one. That mechanism is worth understanding on its own, and it is set out in what an allowance really is.
How we work on a general contracting job: nothing that changes the price proceeds until it is written down, priced and signed, and the running total appears on every one. It slows a few conversations down by a day. It has never once caused an argument at the end, which is the entire point of the document.
Change orders on a Las Vegas remodel
Do I have to sign a change order?
No. You can decline, and the work described does not go ahead. What you cannot do is decline and still expect the original finish date if the item was required to complete the job, so ask what the consequence of refusing is.
How many change orders is normal?
On a straightforward remodel, a handful. On an older house being opened up, more, because more gets discovered. What matters is not the count but whether each one arrived before the work with a number on it.
Can a contractor charge for the change order itself?
Some add a small administration or overhead percentage, which should be disclosed in the original contract rather than appearing for the first time on the change order.
What if the work is already done?
You have lost the leverage the document was designed to give you, which is why the sequence matters. Raise it immediately, ask why it was not presented in advance, and expect a straight answer. Under Nevada law the change should have been in writing.
Is a text message a change order?
It is evidence of an agreement, which is better than nothing, but it is not the itemized written document the statute contemplates. Ask for it properly, and keep the text either way.
How do I keep them under control?
Decide finishes before demolition, keep a contingency of around ten to fifteen percent for anything older than about twenty years, and read every change order the day it arrives rather than at the end of the job.
Want someone to look at it?
Describe what you are seeing, or send a photograph. We will tell you whether it is cosmetic or structural, and we will say so plainly when the answer is that you need a different trade.
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