Am I that far off in this small rehab cost estimate?

[Juan F. Saa]

I am a newbie in the whole repair estimation process so I am seeking opinions on what I am missing. I ran an exercise after reading the J. Scott's Estimating Rehab Costs book to estimate the cost of replacing the front door and two sliding doors in a townhouse in Ashburn, VA. I used Home Depot's Web site to select the doors I wanted and also used the Homewyse website to get a second set of numbers, and they came both pretty close to each other at $1800 products and $1300 labor.

I then contact Home Depot to get a person on site to inspect and take measurements, and a couple days later I get an estimate with two sections: Customer Pickup #1 for $2695, and Installation #1 with $0 total. At that point I didn't know whether they included everything in the first price or just quoted higher end products and didn't include labor for some reason, so I go to the store, and the guy just starts "a new design" where we adjusted the products to what I needed (he was surprised I had found such good cheaper options), but the kicker was that the base installation price (regardless of products) was about $3000. So the total cost is $4800.

I know I have to factor in the pandemic years with higher costs (although I think differences would be mostly in products and materials, not labor), and the fact that the numbers in the book are from 2019, but I was wondering if someone could help me see where I am making a 130+% mistake in my estimation of labor costs.

Thank you in advance!

[Le Jia]

I guess the issue maybe Home Depot installation. Have you try to get a handyman in the area to install it? Also, the inflation is crazy and almost everyone Is busy, I won’t be surprised that the fee in 2021 is much higher than 2019.