Most quotes for a home fix look like a single number. Read it as a stack. Labor, materials, the trip charge, and the permit each move the total, and the permit line is the one families most often skip when they compare two bids.
Local option: New Plan Care gives families in the St. Louis area in-home help so a parent can stay home: companionship, help with bathing and dressing, meals, and overnight care. Call (314) 405-0887.
Ask whether the permit is in the number
Some jobs need a permit before anyone picks up a tool. Structural changes, new electrical circuits, and some exterior work usually do. Simple swaps, such as a grab bar fastened into existing blocking, often do not. The rules depend on the city or county and on the scope of the work, so get the answer from the building department that covers the address. In the St. Louis area, the City and St. Louis County run separate departments, so do not assume one answer covers both. Ask each contractor the same question in writing: is the permit included, and if it is, who pulls it and whose name is on it.
Find who carries the inspection
A pulled permit adds a visit. An inspector has to see the work before it is covered up, and a correction after an inspection means a return trip. If one bid includes the permit and the other leaves it to the homeowner, the lower number may simply be the one without the paperwork. Compare the visit count the way you would for a yard job: how many trips, which ones are inspections, and who waits on whom between them.
Read the scope against the access
The permit fee is only one part of the total. The other drivers are the work the contractor has to open up to do the job properly: a wall cut for blocking, a floor patched after running a line, a panel that has to be reached. Ask each bidder what they will open, what they will patch, and whether the patch is in their figure. A bid that leaves out patching is usually not the cheaper one. It gets finished later by someone else, at a second charge.
Decide what the family can do
Some items are not permit items at all and can be handled by the family with the right tools and the manufacturer's instructions. Fastening a grab bar into solid blocking is one example. Anything that touches a gas line, an electrical panel, or the structure belongs to a licensed trade and to the permit office. If Dad resists a hire, a single visit that finishes the job once is easier to accept than an open project running through his house. Use that as the practical reason for the choice, and let the scope decide it.
Next move
Before you ask for a second number, call the building department for the address and ask whether the specific work needs a permit. Then send each bidder the same written scope and ask them to state, line by line, whether the permit, the inspection visits, and the patching are included. Keep the answers together so you can compare like with like. The local contacts we use are listed on the Local Help in St. Louis page.