Four interior services, each priced on a basis you can check line by line.

Board goes up after your plumber and electrician finish rough-in and pass inspection, not before. Ceilings first, then walls, sheets run horizontally so there are fewer butt joints at eye level. We use half-inch regular board on most walls, 5/8" Type X on garage walls shared with the house and anywhere else the code asks for fire-rated assembly, and moisture-resistant board in bathrooms and laundry rooms outside the splash zone. Behind tile, it is half-inch cement board, screwed and taped with alkali-resistant mesh. Never greenboard behind a shower.

Taping is paper tape bedded in setting compound on the inside corners and flats, then two coats of lightweight topping, sanded between. Mud needs 24 hours between coats in an Austin August with the AC running. Rush it and it cracks in October. We don't rush it, which is why a bedroom takes four or five working days from bare studs to primer and not two.

Skim coat walls in Austin usually means one of two jobs. Old plaster that has been patched so often it looks like a map, or a Level 5 finish on new board where the light will rake across a flat sheen. Both get a full coat of thinned compound over the whole surface with a wide blade, a day to dry, a second pass, a sand and a primer. It is priced per square foot of wall because it is surface work, not sheet work.

Popcorn ceiling removal sits here too. Once the lab result is clean, we wet the texture, scrape it, skim the ceiling to a flat finish and prime it. Subfloors that dip more than 1/8" over six feet get self-levelling underlayment poured over primer, which needs 24 hours before tile and longer before glued flooring.

Baseboard and casing go on after the walls are primed, so the paint line on the wall is already there to caulk to. We cope inside corners on baseboard instead of mitring them, because a coped joint stays closed when the wall moves with the seasons and a mitre opens up. Nails get set and filled, joints get caulked with paintable acrylic, and the trim gets its primer before the finish coats.

Paint is one coat of primer on new or patched surfaces and two finish coats on walls, ceiling and trim of the room. You pick the colour and the sheen. We'll tell you if the sheen you picked will show every roller mark on a Level 4 wall, and what a Level 5 skim would add, before you buy the gallons.

Then the walk. We go room by room with you and a roll of blue tape. Anything you or we see gets a flag and a line on a written punch list: a rough spot, a caulk gap, a hinge screw that isn't flush. Of everything a renovation punch list contractor does, this is the part we won't hurry. The final invoice waits until every line is closed and you've signed the list off.

The plastic comes down last. We vacuum the floors and the Ram Board before we lift it, wipe every sill and ledge, and take every scrap, bucket and screw with us. That clean is in every job and never a separate charge.