Is this too much for a custom ring?

[Yorosandwich]

I was lucky enough to receive my mother's old engagement ring to change that comes with a really pretty 1 carat round diamond. It's actually a hawaiian style ring so it's a super thick band of yellow gold(I think 5 grams?). Anyways, I went to an appointment-only jeweler and found a beautiful ring to change it into. So what we were going to do is use the diamond as the center, melt the gold or swap it? and make that the band for the engagement ring, and add 8-9 small 2.5mm diamonds around the center. But they say this will cost $2,000 to do.

I'm not sure if this is a good price or not because the original ring that we saw had 3mm diamonds surround the center stone and also small diamonds around the sides of the ring and it alone costs $3,100. Is this job a fair price? I know it's a custom job but I just don't know if this is worth it when I could just buy the already made ring for around $1,000 more. And I feel like there would be leftover gold from my original ring to be returned to me or drop the price a little. Thank you for your time!

 

[MollyMalone]

Don't know what that particular jeweler's MO is, but here's another jeweler's explanation of why he always adds fresh gold -- which is the major reason why such a project isn't the money-saver his customers might be expecting:
http://ganoksin.com/blog/mardonjewelers/custom-jewelry/the-problems-in-making-jewelry-from-old-gold