We are currently up to about $9K on a project to replace our old white painted pine stairs with stained oak treads and cherry posts and rail. When we first kicked it off, we thought it would come in around $5-6K. The carpenter is a perfectionist and does amazing work that we love. There is $250 there for some drywall repair that bleeds into the living room from the stairway, so that room will need painted plus the stain for the stairs, rails, and adjacent replaced oak closet doors. The carpenter has a painter that he uses (he will only accept very good subs) and thought that staining for the stairs would be $800. That figure is in the $9K.
The painter just came in with his estimate - much masking due to the two woods, two stain coats on all the wood, 3 coats of clear, repair all issues on the stairway and living room walls and ceiling, primer, two coats of paint. $3300. Even with the expanded job we were expecting about half of that. We would be up to $11.4K total.
We have complications in that we are about to go travelling for a while, and the work could be done while we are gone to great convenience. We would have to wait until we return to find someone else, don't know how much we might save or what shortcuts would happen in quality for a lower price, and might be in the house for expended periods with no access to the master bedroom or bathrooms upstairs.
We are stunned at having to pay so much more, but know the result will be very fine and do not see a reasonable alternative. We can afford it, but are disillusioned about how these things always snowball in cost.