Panel upgrade and small job costs

What do small home jobs cost?

Four jobs, each with its own national starting point and its own labor share, then scaled to your city. An electrical panel upgrade from 100 to 200 amps starts at $2,800, and about 55 percent of that is labor. A dishwasher with the hookups already there starts at $780, about 40 percent labor. Painting one bedroom, labor and paint, starts at $650, about 62 percent labor. A new dedicated 20-amp circuit starts at $420, about 70 percent labor. The low column is 78 percent of the scaled typical. The high column is 134 percent. Pick a city or you are looking at a national crew.

Electrical panel upgrade cost

The panel row is a straight 100-to-200-amp replacement, not a service change from the pole, not a rewire, and not a Federal Pacific or Zinsco replacement with surprises in every box. Those can honestly cost more than the high column. The panel amps in the bar are what you have now. They do not change this price. They remind you that a 60-amp or 100-amp service is the usual reason someone asks. If you rent, this is not your project.

A new circuit, a dishwasher, a bedroom of paint

A dedicated 20-amp circuit is the job the circuit calculator sends you to when a heater and a window unit do not fit together. The price assumes a reachable panel and a normal run, not a finished ceiling that has to be opened across the house. A dishwasher price assumes the water, the drain, and the power are already in the cabinet. If they are not, you are past this row. Paint is one bedroom, labor and paint, not a whole apartment and not lead-safe work in a pre-1978 nursery. Lead rules and a color change on every wall are a different scope.

How to read a quote against the table

Find the row that matches the job you were actually sold. If the quote is inside the range, read the scope anyway. If it is far above the high number, ask what was added: drywall, a permit, a long wire pull, a haul-away, a second color. Low is the easy version of that same sentence. It is not a cheaper brand of panel stuffed into the same line to make a city look affordable.

City labor is why the same dishwasher is not the same price in Boston and in Houston. Materials move only a little. The crew moves with the labor factor printed on the city page. Reviewed 2026-09-01. None of these rows is a bid, and none of them gets cheaper because someone paid to be listed.

If you only needed one of the four jobs, ignore the other rows. A panel upgrade does not make a bedroom of paint more expensive, and a paint price does not tell you what a panel costs. Match the sentence on the quote to one row, then ask what was added if the number sits above the high column. Take a photo of the panel or the cabinet before you ask for the quote, so the scope on the page and the scope in the room are the same thing.

Share the row, not the whole table. “A 100-to-200-amp panel in this city is typically this much, and a rewire is extra” is useful to a spouse or a landlord. Four unrelated prices in one screenshot is how a small paint job gets blamed for a panel. One job, one band, then the written scope.