When you create a New Property or Select a House from your Saved Houses page, you'll arrive at the Choose rooms to repair page.  If your property is new, you'll see the Exterior, Mechanicals, and Add New Room Icons.  Click on the Exterior or Mechanicals to immediately start selecting that type of repair.

To add a new room to select repairs in, click on the Add New Room icon.  A drop down menu will appear.  Select the type of room you want to add from the drop down.  The room type includes repairs that are typically associated with that area of the house.  Kitchen repairs for example include appliances, countertops, and cabinets - living room repairs don't include these items.  I've kept the repair selection process as streamlined as possible so that you aren't fumbling through dozens of repair line selection choices when that's not necessary.

Room set up is easy.  Just enter a name for the room that will identify it for you - like Upstairs Purple Bedroom and the room dimensions.  This is one of the few measurements you need to enter. A number of items are calculated automatically from room dimensions, like drywalling & painting walls, installing baseboards and flooring.  Ceiling height defaults to 8 ft, which is pretty standard, but make sure you change this if you have high ceilings so that the most accurate estimates possible are created.  You can add an contingency amount in dollars to each room.  Note that this will be added on top of the % contingency that's applied to all repairs - not in lieu of.

Once you have finished creating the room, click on the Add Repairs Category and you'll get a drop down menu that includes all the groups of repairs that are applicable to that room.  Choose one and the Choose Repair Type selection will appear.  Click on this and a drop down with all the individual repair line items that are included in the repair group will appear.  For example, under walls you'll find: Hang Drywall, Finish Drywall, Remove Wallpaper, Paint Walls and Prime Walls.

Click on a repair and the Choose Product Line box will appear.  This allows you to choose the specific material type you want to use.  The Home Remodeling Cost Calculator comes loaded with a selection of the most commonly used materials and you can easily add a material type - either at the time you're selecting a repair or by adding it in the Cost Settings area.

Once you've selected your materials, the repair line item will appear, displaying the total cost of the repair, the materials cost used(per unit) and the labor cost used (again per unit).  If you change any costs in the Cost Settings area, your changes will automatically be applied.  By clicking on the blue question mark box, you can see the amount of units used in the calculation, both the system and settings (your changes) costs and the total amount of cost applied to this repair.  You can adjust the material and/or labor cost applied to the repair and the change will be immediately applied to the repair (but only to that repair - to change cost used everywhere use the Cost Settings function).  The red question marks contain comments about how labor or materials costs are applied - please read these before adjusting any costs!  Click the DIY (Do It Yourself) box and the labor cost will be removed.  Click the garbage can icon to delete the repair line item.

The line item repair cost will automatically be added to both the Room Total and the House Total.