How to Use CurbMark

CurbMark covers 17 project types across four categories: Remodels (Kitchen, Bathroom), Systems (HVAC, Electrical Panel, Water Heater, Basement Waterproofing), Exterior (Roof, Windows, Siding, Deck/Patio, Gutters, Garage Door, Driveway), and Interior Finishes (Painting, Flooring, Carpeting, Interior Doors).

What you pick here decides everything downstream — which questions you're asked next, and the "Hire a pro", "Weekend DIY", or "Moderate DIY" badge that shows up on your result. That badge is deliberately conservative: anything involving gas, electrical, height, or structural work is always framed as pro work, even if you toggle a DIY option on for part of it.

This step looks different depending on what you picked. Carpeting skips it entirely and goes straight to Step 3, since there's nothing left to specify beyond quality tier.

Kitchen & Bathroom — item by item

These two work differently from everything else: instead of one scope choice, every individual component — cabinets, countertops, appliances, flooring, and so on — has its own on/off switch, and you only pay for what you actually mark as being replaced. Three quick-select tabs above the list — Full remodel, Partial, Single item — set a sensible starting point, and you can fine-tune any individual item from there. A live estimate at the top of the card updates instantly with every change, so you can see the effect of each choice as you make it.

Right under that live estimate is a "Doing any of this yourself?" toggle. It's off by default to keep the screen simple. Flip it on and a "Doing this part yourself?" switch appears under every item you're replacing, so you can mark specific ones — say, cabinets and flooring, but not countertops — as self-installed, which drops that item's labor cost from the estimate. Flip the master toggle back off and those switches disappear again; any DIY picks you made are cleared at the same time, so the price goes back to full-pro pricing for every item rather than silently keeping a discount you can no longer see. A few items never offer a DIY option even with the toggle on — Kitchen's sink/faucet and lighting/electrical, and Bathroom's lighting/electrical and plumbing fixtures — since those are exactly the gas, electrical, and rough-plumbing jobs worth hiring out.

Every other project — pick the kind of job

For everything else, this step is a single-select list of "what kind of job is this" cards — for example, Roof asks 3-tab asphalt vs. architectural shingle vs. standing-seam metal vs. tile; HVAC asks central air only vs. furnace only vs. full system vs. heat pump conversion; Painting asks interior only, exterior only, or both. For most of these types, the card you pick already is the quality ladder, so there's no separate tier choice layered on top later.

Four controls, though not every project shows all four:

• Size / quantity — a +/– stepper for square footage, linear feet, or a plain count (windows, doors), depending on the project. Each has a sensible minimum and maximum; the stepper simply stops moving once you hit either end.
• Quality tier — Budget, Mid, or Luxury. Mid is the baseline; Budget runs about 28% below it, Luxury about 65% above it. This control only appears for project types where quality isn't already locked in by your Step 2 pick — Kitchen, Bathroom, HVAC, Painting, Flooring, Carpeting, and Interior Doors. Everything else (Roof, Windows, Siding, Deck/Patio, Gutters, Garage Door, Driveway, Electrical Panel, Water Heater, Basement Waterproofing) skips it, since the material or job type you already chose in Step 2 sets the quality level — stacking a second "Luxury" control on top of "standing-seam metal roof" would just be redundant.
• Home age — 2000s or newer, 1970s–1990s, or before 1970. Older homes carry a modest surcharge to account for the higher odds of surprises behind the walls.
• ZIP code — resolves to a state and applies that state's labor-cost multiplier to the whole estimate. If you type a ZIP that doesn't match a real U.S. location, you'll see a small note — "Couldn't match that ZIP — using national average" — and the estimate falls back to an unadjusted national number instead of a location-specific one.

"Get my estimate" stays disabled until you've entered a valid 5-digit ZIP.

The result screen leads with your range — Low, Mid, and High — plus the skill-level badge from Step 1. Low and High aren't arbitrary padding: they reflect the real spread contractors quote for the same job depending on who you hire, material availability, and site conditions. The exact math behind every number is on the Methodology page, if you want the full breakdown.

Below that, Labor, Materials, and Permits totals, followed by an itemized breakdown — every line item that fed into the number, each with a "Shop →" link straight to a real retailer search for that material where one makes sense.

For Painting, Flooring, Carpeting, and Interior Doors, there's also a whole-project "Doing this yourself?" switch right in the summary — flip it on and labor drops out of the estimate for the whole job. Right below that, a "Thinking of doing this yourself?" section expands into an actual how-to: a rough time estimate, a numbered walkthrough of the job, and a shopping list of what you'd need — written specifically for homeowners weighing whether to take it on themselves.

At the bottom: Copy share link encodes every choice you made — project, scope, size, tier, ZIP, DIY picks — into a single URL, so you (or anyone you send it to) can reopen the exact same estimate later with no account and nothing saved on our end. If your browser blocks the automatic copy, we'll show you the link directly so you can select and copy it by hand. The three Edit links at the top of the card jump straight back to Project, Scope, or Details — everything you'd already picked is still there, so you're only changing the one thing you meant to. Start over clears everything and returns to Step 1.