Free home improvement trade document templates

Kitchens, bathrooms, flooring, decorating and general refurbishment share a particular risk: the customer is living inside the job, and their expectations move as the work progresses. The paperwork in this category exists to fix the specification at the point of agreement, then manage the changes deliberately rather than absorbing them.

The specification and sign-off templates are the foundation. Every material, finish, colour, fixing and appliance recorded, with model numbers where they exist, and the customer's signature against it. Colour is worth its own line — a great many decorating disputes are about a shade that was chosen from a phone screen and looked different on a north-facing wall, and a signed schedule naming the exact product and finish ends that argument before it begins.

The fit schedule sets out the sequence and the dates: strip out, first fix, plaster, tiling, second fix, snag. On a kitchen or bathroom the customer is without a room for the duration, so a written sequence with realistic dates manages the anxiety that otherwise arrives as a daily phone call. It also documents dependencies outside your control — the worktop template that cannot be done until the units are level, the appliance the customer is supplying that has not arrived.

Variation forms handle the inevitable. Once the floor comes up, something is always different from what was assumed. A short signed variation with a price, agreed on the day, is the entire difference between an extra and an argument.

Snagging lists close the job. A walk-round with the customer, everything listed, each item dated when resolved, and a final sign-off. Projects without a snagging document tend never to formally end, which is also why they tend not to get paid in full.

All editable .docx and A4.