27 Line Items Most Contractors Forget to Bill
You submit your estimate for a kitchen water damage job. The adjuster approved it mostly as-is, and you felt good about the scope. Three months later, you're talking to another contractor at an IICRC event and he mentions he always includes appliance disconnectAppliance Disconnect & Reconnect: $800-$1,500 That's Almost Never ListedWhen your kitchen or laundry area needs repairs, every appliance has to be disconnected, moved out, and reconnected afterward. Xactimate has separa...
Read more → and reconnect, contents manipulation, and full-room paintingFull-Room Painting: Why Touching Up a Patch Never WorksWhen walls are repaired after water damage, fire, or other covered losses, the repainted patch rarely matches the surrounding wall. I watched this ...
Read more → on kitchen water jobs. You pull up your last ten estimates. None of them have those line items. You do the math: $1,500 to $3,000 per job, times ten jobs. That's $15,000 to $30,000 you left on the table in three months.
Demolition and removal: 5 items
Demolition is where contractors most often leave scope behind. You know you need to tear out the damaged drywall, but are you accounting for every step of that process? Each of these items is separate, billable work.
| # | Line item | When it applies | Typical value |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Contents manipulation (move and reset) | Any room where furniture, appliances, or stored items need to be moved to access the work area, then moved back after completion | $150-$600 per room |
| 2 | Baseboard removal and reset | When flooring is replaced in a room with existing baseboards that need to come off and go back on | $2-$4 per linear foot |
| 3 | Appliance disconnect and reconnect | Kitchen and laundry rooms where appliances must be disconnected for demo and reconnected after | $75-$250 per appliance |
| 4 | Fixture removal and reset | Bathroom fixtures (toilet, vanity, light fixtures) that must be removed for wall or floor work | $50-$200 per fixture |
| 5 | Haul-off and disposal fees | All demo jobs, priced by volume (CY) or weight, including dumpster rental if applicable | $200-$800 per job |
Drywall and finishing: 5 items
Drywall work is never just "hang and tape." The finishing steps are where most scope gets missed. Each finishing operation is a separate skill and a separate line item.
| # | Line item | When it applies | Typical value |
|---|---|---|---|
| 6 | Texture matching (knockdown, orange peel, skip trowel) | Any drywall replacement where the existing wall has a texture pattern that needs to match | $1-$3 per SF |
| 7 | Skim coat for smooth walls | When existing walls are smooth finish (no texture) and new drywall patches need to blend seamlessly | $1-$2 per SF |
| 8 | Full-room painting vs. spot priming | When more than 50% of a wall is replaced or repaired, full-room painting is required to achieve a uniform finish | $300-$800 per room |
| 9 | Primer coat (separate from paint) | New drywall, stain blocking after smoke or water damage, or when changing paint types | $0.50-$1.50 per SF |
| 10 | Moisture-resistant drywall in wet areas | Bathroom, kitchen, and laundry drywall replacement where code requires moisture-resistant or mold-resistant board | $0.25-$0.75 per SF upcharge over standard |
Flooring: 4 items
When you price flooring replacement, are you including everything from the subfloor up? These four items represent work you almost certainly do on every floor job but may not be billing for separately.
| # | Line item | When it applies | Typical value |
|---|---|---|---|
| 11 | Subfloor replacement | When moisture readings in the subfloor exceed the flooring manufacturer's installation threshold (typically 12% for wood, varies by product) | $3-$10 per SF |
| 12 | Floor leveling compound | When the subfloor or slab has low spots or unevenness that prevents proper flooring installation | $1-$3 per SF |
| 13 | Transition strips and thresholds | At every doorway or flooring type change where new flooring meets existing flooring or a different surface | $15-$50 per transition |
| 14 | Furniture moving allowance (if not contents manipulation) | When flooring replacement requires moving heavy furniture across the room or to another room during installation | $150-$400 per room |
Plumbing: 3 items
Plumbing scope goes beyond fixing the leak. When walls are opened up, you expose existing plumbing that may need to be brought up to code. These items are covered under ordinance or lawYour Walls Are Open. Now the Inspector Wants $5,000 in Upgrades.Nobody warned me about this one. When the drywall came down on my claim, I thought we were just replacing what got damaged. Then the building inspe...
Read more → coverage and are frequently missed.
| # | Line item | When it applies | Typical value |
|---|---|---|---|
| 15 | Supply line replacement (polybutylene or galvanized to PEX) | When demo exposes outdated supply line materials that fail current code inspection | $200-$600 per fixture |
| 16 | Shut-off valve replacement (gate to ball valve) | When demo exposes multi-turn gate valves that inspectors require to be replaced with quarter-turn ball valves | $100-$250 per valve |
| 17 | P-trap and drain line reconnection | When sink or vanity removal requires disconnecting and reconnecting drain lines, especially if existing P-traps are corroded | $75-$200 per fixture |
Electrical: 3 items
Electrical code triggers are some of the most valuable supplementSupplements: Getting Paid for What the Adjuster Could Not SeeA supplement adds items to your existing insurance estimate after the original scope was written. Hidden damage behind walls, code upgrades flagged...
Read more → items because they are required by code, not optional. When walls are opened during a repair, exposed electrical work must meet current code. The inspector enforces this, not the contractor.
| # | Line item | When it applies | Typical value |
|---|---|---|---|
| 18 | GFCI outlet installation or upgrade | Any kitchen, bathroom, laundry, garage, or exterior outlet exposed during repair that does not have GFCI protection | $100-$200 per outlet |
| 19 | AFCI breaker upgrade | When electrical work in bedrooms or living areas triggers current NEC requirements for arc-fault protection | $100-$250 per circuit |
| 20 | Smoke and CO detector replacement | When code requires hardwired, interconnected detectors and existing units are expired, battery-only, or insufficient | $75-$150 per unit |
Cabinetry and countertops: 3 items
Kitchen and bathroom cabinet scope is where the biggest dollar gaps live. The difference between pricing stock replacement cabinets and matching the existing construction quality can be $5,000 to $20,000 on a single kitchen.
| # | Line item | When it applies | Typical value |
|---|---|---|---|
| 21 | Cabinet grade upgrade (stock to semi-custom or custom) | When existing cabinets have dovetail drawers, soft-close hinges, plywood construction, or other features above stock grade | $50-$200 per linear foot upcharge |
| 22 | Countertop edge profile matching | When the existing countertop has an ogee, bullnose, or other non-standard edge that must be matched for like-kind replacement | $10-$25 per linear foot upcharge |
| 23 | Cabinet hardware replacement | When cabinet doors and drawers are replaced but existing hardware is damaged, discontinued, or incompatible with new doors | $5-$30 per piece |
General conditions and miscellaneous: 4 items
These items apply to nearly every job but are the most frequently left off estimates. O&P alone can represent $6,000 to $20,000 on a mid-size claim.
| # | Line item | When it applies | Typical value |
|---|---|---|---|
| 24 | Overhead and Profit (O&P) | Any project involving three or more trades requiring general contractor coordination | 20% of base repair cost |
| 25 | Permit and inspection fees | Any repair requiring a building permit (electrical panel work, plumbing rerouting, structural modifications, roofing in many jurisdictions) | $200-$1,500 per permit |
| 26 | Temporary protection (floor, cabinet, fixture covering) | When work in one area requires protecting adjacent finished surfaces from damage during construction | $100-$400 per job |
| 27 | Cleaning (construction and final) | Post-construction cleanup of dust, debris, and construction residue from all affected and adjacent areas | $200-$600 per job |
How to use this list
Print this list or save it to your phone. Before you submit your next estimate, run through all 27 items and ask yourself whether each one applies to the job you're scoping. You won't use all 27 on every job.
But on a typical kitchen water damage claim, items 1 through 14 and 24 through 27 almost always apply. That's 18 line items. If you're currently including 10 of them, you're leaving 8 legitimate line items off every kitchen job.
At an average of $200-$500 per missed item, that's $1,600 to $4,000 per job. Multiply that by your annual job count. The math is hard to ignore.
The key is building these items into your standard scope review process so you never have to rely on memory alone. ScopeOwl identifies most of these items automatically from job site photos, but having this list in your back pocket for manual review is a solid backup.
Quick-check your estimate
- Review your last 5 estimates against this list and note which items you consistently miss
- Create a personal checklist template for each damage type (water, fire, wind)
- Add a pre-submission review step where you check for these items before sending your estimate
- Track which items you add most frequently and their approval rates
- Share this list with your estimators and field techs so they document these items on site
See what scope you're missing
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