We put our pool in about six months ago and are wishing like you wouldn't believe, that we wouldn't have. I'm a realtor and my husband owns a home inspection business. We feel like we're at the very top of the economic pain chain right now. First we had Hurricane Ike and no power for two weeks, then went straight into the 24/7 news coverage about how bad our economy is. Houston weathered the original mortgage crisis really well. Our market didn't take a hit like the others did. But now, my husband hasn't gotten a call since before Hurricane Ike. That's almost a month. He never used to go more than two days. We can't tell what's hurricane related, or what's fear related right now. My work has stayed pretty much the same, because I'm in the foreclosure industry. Because of the path I've chosen, his inspection business is the bulk of our income. (He's also a career firefighter, but it'll be extremely tight living off of that.) I look in my backyard and I love what I see, but I definitely do not like the fact that I ate up a huge portion of my equity when I put it in. Worst case for us, we might very well have to sell our house in the near future, and when/if we do, we're going to take a hit that we wouldn't have taken prior to the pool. The only way I'd put one in right now, is by paying cash only. No way, no how, would I finance one and eat into my equity. And I would do neither if my job wasn't secure. Just a thought.

It would probably be a good idea to have an attorney experienced in such matters review the contract. I couldn't imagine it costing more than a few hundred dollars, a tiny fraction of what you're going to spend on the addition.

renovator8, I appreciate your efforts to explain, although I don't follow your last comment. I've never had a contract with allowances before, only owner-furnished items I bought myself, and all change orders had to be signed by both parties. I'll try applying examples to make this more concrete: The contract doesn't define change order, and I understood it to mean written. There were none by that definition. I did agree to pay more for certain items, and I'm not questioning related charges. Some categories (e.g., tile) combined materials and labor; I asked for a breakdown in some cases, so I would know if I was close to the allowance. I was told the tile guys were being paid by the job, so only excess material costs should affect the total, right? Am I due invoices for all charges? Materials and labor? The contract doesn't promise those. I deleted several costly items and received credits (e.g., they used my paint for some areas). Would I then be owed 15% in addition to the paint credit? Paint allowance wasn't itemized to each area.

Thanks, all for the insight. Based on past experience I don't have a problem with the markup - with past designers the items I've gotten have been below retail even with the markup, and when they weren't I purchased them independent from the designer. I'm not fond of paying the markup AND and hourly rate - I would expect one or the other to be lower when working on items for which the designers gets a markup (v. specing items for the builder to order). That said, we strongly prefer this design firm and are going ahead with them, as they bring tremendous value that others with whom we've chatted just can't provide (prime among them being excellent communication and follow through, and use of CAD in the design process both to help us visualize options and to ensure the desired end result is clear to installers). Mostly, the contract terms just make it such that we're unlikely to buy furniture or window coverings through the designer, but, honestly, we don't really want new furniture, and I can handle window coverings.