Not every project fits a category. If what you need spans several trades, involves something unusual, or you are simply not sure who to ask for, describing the outcome you want is usually more productive than trying to classify the work yourself.
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Describe the outcome rather than the method, include photographs and measurements, and say explicitly what you are unsure about. Contractors are usually good at proposing an approach when they understand the goal, and the ones who ask good questions in response are generally the ones worth shortlisting.
That is a normal position and not an obstacle to getting quotes. Describe the problem or the outcome you want in plain language, add photographs, and let contractors tell you what the work involves. Experienced contractors are used to translating a description into a scope, and the quality of the questions you get back is a useful signal in itself: someone who asks about access, existing construction and what is behind the wall is thinking about the job properly, while someone who quotes immediately without asking anything probably has not. If the work genuinely spans several trades, you may receive proposals both from a general contractor offering to coordinate everything and from individual trades covering their portion, which is useful information about how the project is best structured.
The comparison problem is harder here than on standard work, because contractors may propose genuinely different approaches rather than different prices for the same approach. Rather than lining up totals, first understand what each is proposing to do and why, since the cheapest may be solving a smaller problem. Ask each contractor to itemize labor, materials, permits and any subcontracted work, and to state explicitly what is excluded. Where approaches differ substantially, it is worth asking each to comment on the alternative, which frequently surfaces a constraint you did not know about. Then compare on scope, exclusions, the specificity of the document, license and insurance verification, references for comparable work, and payment terms. On unusual work, relevant experience deserves more weight than it does on routine jobs.
For work spanning multiple trades, a single general contractor coordinating everything costs more than hiring trades directly, because you are paying for management, sequencing and a single point of accountability. That premium is frequently worth it. Coordinating trades yourself means you own the schedule, and when the tiler arrives before the plumber has finished, that is your problem and usually your cost. It also means you carry responsibility if something goes wrong at the boundary between two trades, where each may reasonably point at the other. Managing it yourself makes sense for a small number of loosely coupled jobs, or if you have real construction experience and time. For anything tightly sequenced, or where permits and inspections are involved, a general contractor usually earns their margin.
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