Price of a treehouse

I have noticed that in the beginning of this series, the wife or daughter would interrupt his 'time' with the cute dog to tell him about another customer. They always mentioned that the customer wanted a treehouse and were willing to spend XXXX amount of dollars on the project... Now it's just 'we got a customer and let's go build'... I guess we don't need to know the price anymore.

And in the earlier episodes, Pete would always have to depart the current build to run off somewhere to repair someone else's treehouse... That seems to have been dropped, too. I remember one 'repair' where he ran off to put a coat of paint on some steps leading up to the treehouse, couldn't the owner have done this? Was the owner that lazy or incompetant to buy paint and a brush and spend all of an hour to paint some stairs ? And considering that Pete has to travel from his location to the guy's treehouse to paint the stairs, wouldn't that cost a bundle ? I mean, it looked to me to be about $1000 to put some paint on the steps... That just seemed concocted...

southbound