Guides for Maine Homeowners
What things cost, and how to hire somebody without getting burned. No sign-up, no gate, no sales pitch.
Which guide do you need?
Maine Doesn't License General Contractors. Here's What to Check Instead
Maine does not license general contractors. What the state does license, why people think otherwise, and what to verify instead.
12 Questions to Ask a Contractor Before You Sign
The 12 questions to ask a contractor before you sign, what a good answer sounds like, and which answers should end the conversation.
Contractor Red Flags: What to Walk Away From
Contractor red flags sorted by when you see them: first contact, site visit, written quote, contract, and once the work starts.
My Contractor Stopped Showing Up. Now What?
A contractor abandoned your job in Maine: how to tell a stall from a stop, what to document, who to contact, and when to call an attorney.
How to Read a Contractor's Estimate
How to read a contractor estimate line by line: scope, allowances, exclusions, contingency, markup, and fixed price versus cost plus.
Getting a Second Opinion on a Contractor's Bid
When a contractor second opinion is worth getting, how to ask without burning the first bid, and why bid shopping backfires.
What Maine's 1/3 Down Payment Law Means for You
Maine's contractor deposit law caps the initial down payment at one third of the contract price. What it covers, and what it does not.
Contractor Insurance in Maine: What to Verify
Contractor insurance in Maine: the two policies that matter, how to get a certificate from the agent, and the sole proprietor comp exemption.
How Much Does It Cost to Build a House in Maine?
We break down the cost to build a house in Maine by region and finish level, then cover the five things that push it up and three ways to keep it down.
How Much Does It Cost to Remodel a Kitchen in Portland, ME?
What a kitchen remodel costs in Portland, ME: real ranges from $14,000, what the layout decision does to the number, and what changes after demolition.
How Much Does It Cost to Remodel a Bathroom in Portland, ME?
What a bathroom remodel costs in Portland, ME: per-bathroom ranges from $12,000, and what tile labor does to the number.
How Much Does It Cost to Finish a Basement in Portland, ME?
What finishing a basement costs in Portland, ME: real ranges from $30,000, why water comes before framing, and what an older foundation changes.
How Much Does It Cost to Build a Garage in Portland, ME?
What a garage costs to build in Portland, ME: the per-square-foot model behind the ranges, and why dimensions divisible by four cost less.
How Much Does It Cost to Build a Deck in Portland, ME?
What a deck costs to build in Portland, ME: real per-square-foot floors, why small decks cost more per foot, and what actually drives the number.
How Much Does It Cost to Replace Siding in Portland, ME?
What siding replacement costs in Portland, ME: real ranges from $10,000, why tearing off beats going over, and what the crew finds behind the old cladding.
How Much Does It Cost to Replace Windows in Portland, ME?
What window replacement costs in Portland, ME: ranges from $5,000, why the quote spread is installation, and when not to replace.
What Do House Plans Cost in Portland, ME?
What house plans cost in Portland, ME: flat pricing from $1,250, what each tier includes, and what is not in the price.
The Truth Behind the Maine Contractor Epidemic
Why Maine homeowners can't get contractors to call back, why the state sets no standard for builders, and the checks to run before anyone touches your house.
Building or Remodeling in Maine? Put Radon in the Plan Before the Walls Close
Maine code requires passive radon systems in new homes. What remodels do to radon levels, testing well water, the ADU landlord law, and hiring registered pros.
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Two kinds of guide sit here. The cost guides publish real ranges for Maine projects, drawn from hundreds of estimates rather than from a national calculator. The hiring guides cover the part nobody explains: Maine does not license general contractors, so the checks that protect you are a written contract, verified insurance, references you actually call, and a deposit inside the legal cap.
Everything is free to read and none of it is gated. If you want three quotes on your project instead, that is the other thing we do, and it costs you nothing either.
Why do these Maine contractor guides exist?
Most of what a Maine homeowner needs to know before starting a project is not published anywhere useful.
Cost information online is written for a national audience and is wrong here by a wide margin. Hiring advice is written for states that license contractors, which Maine does not. So people arrive at their first quote with no way to tell whether the number is fair and no idea what to check about the person who wrote it.
These guides are the things we end up saying on the phone. We would rather write them down once and have you arrive at the conversation already knowing them.
Where should you start?
If you read one page here, read how to hire a contractor in Maine without getting burned. It covers the whole arc, from writing down your scope before you call anybody through to the final payment, and it links out to the eight guides that go deeper on each step.
The spine of all of it is one fact that surprises almost everybody: Maine does not license general contractors. Only plumbers, electricians, land surveyors and site evaluators hold state licenses. There is no registry to look a builder up in, which changes what you should be checking.
How accurate are the cost ranges?
Every figure in the cost guides is a qualifying range rather than a quote. They are averages across hundreds of estimates, and your project will land somewhere inside them depending on your house, your town and what turns up once a wall is open.
That is the point of publishing them. A range tells you whether a project fits your budget before you spend three weeks finding out, and it tells you whether the quote in your hand is in the right neighbourhood.
What no range can do is price your specific project. Nobody can do that from a webpage, including us.
What will you not find here?
No gated downloads and no email wall. Nothing here asks for your address before it tells you something.
No fabricated statistics, no invented review counts, and no numbers we cannot stand behind. Where we do not have a reliable model for something, the guide says so plainly instead of guessing.
And no code figures. Setbacks, frost depth, egress and permit thresholds genuinely differ town to town in this state, so every guide routes those to your local code office rather than publishing a number that is wrong for most readers.
How do we actually make money?
Worth saying on a page full of free advice, because it should affect how you read it.
Contractors pay us a commission when they close work with you, and we are sometimes paid in connection with a real estate referral depending on the brokerage. You pay nothing for a referral, ever.
So our incentive is that a project happens. Which is exactly why the most useful thing we do is often telling somebody their budget does not match their plan, before they spend a month finding out the expensive way. Read everything here with that in mind.