Two things about how a remodeling job actually runs that almost nobody sees, and both of them affect your timeline more than anything you pick out at a showroom.
Your estimate took me four hours and it was free
When I quote a job, I am not writing a number on the back of a card. I am putting together drawings and a line-by-line scope. That is usually four hours or more of work, and it costs you nothing.
I do not say that to complain. It is how the trade works and I have always done it. But I do wonder sometimes whether people know how much goes into the thing they are comparing against two other numbers.
It also explains why a specific estimate is worth more than a cheap one. My contracts list every single thing I am doing. That sounds like paperwork until something comes up mid-job — then we can both look at the list and see immediately whether it was in there. If it is not, it is genuinely additional, not something I missed and am now charging you for. Most disputes I hear about between homeowners and contractors are really just vague contracts.
And when there is a change, I charge the delta. If you add a toilet, you pay for the toilet and the labor to put it in. No administrative fee, no per-change-order charge, no two hundred dollar minimum. That is not standard and it is worth asking about when you compare bids.
Permits are the real schedule risk
Here is the part that surprises people. The thing most likely to blow up your timeline is not materials or crew availability. It is the permit office, and which county you are in matters enormously.
City of Rockville is the hardest permitting department I have ever worked with. They are allowed thirty days to review, and they take the thirty days before they look at it. Then they come back with questions, and then you wait again. I am submitting for a deck there right now. Last year it was a basement. Same experience both times.
What gets me is that if you call them, they are perfectly pleasant and they will often handle it right then. The delay is not the people. It is that the thirty days exist, so the thirty days get used.
Montgomery County is somewhat better. Not dramatically.
Frederick is not bad at all. I have never had the kind of trouble there that I have in Rockville.
I have not pulled permits in Carroll or Washington County, so I will not pretend to know.
What this means for you
If your project needs a permit and you are in Rockville, add a month to whatever you were picturing, and start the paperwork before you start picking tile. If you are in Frederick, you have more room than you think.
Either way, ask your contractor when the permit goes in. If the answer is vague, that is worth pushing on. A permit submitted late is the most common reason a job that was going to finish in the spring finishes in the summer.
Happy to walk through what your specific project would need before you commit to anything.