How many times you've had a customer hire you to do work and then refuse to pay you? The whole point of the contract is to (1) give you ammunition if you have to take them to court, and (2) manage customer expectations so that it never gets that far.

I've been doing renovation work for 15 years professionally and another 8 years non-profit before that. This is the contract that has "evolved" during the last 15 years. Every paragraph in here was written in response to an individual specific client who tried to rip me off. I've learned a lot of hard lessons through the school of hard knocks.

I've had a lawyer look at it and make some revisions but I wouldn't say it was written by a lawyer, so DO NOT consider this sample agreement to be legal advice. It's merely a template, and a good place for you to start asking questions of a legal professional in your state about how you can protect yourself from some of the scenarios that I elude to throughout this document. The laws of every state are different. And what works here in Pennsylvania may not work in your state. You need to find some legal counsel to look over the particulars.