as others have said without knowing milage its difficult...

but i think hes wise in advising you to replace stuff while he is there, suspension stuff is always labour intensive and best to do in pairs.

I would (personnaly) also get all the bushes done and replace the sway bar links as a matter of course, hes goign to have to (try) and undo ia lot of it anyway and the parts prices are cheap - in some cases it will be faster for him to 'destructively' remove things if he knows that he has to replace them anyway than to try and 'carefully' remove them - the time difference offsetting the parts cost!

Having just done a sway bar link i can ttest they are a complete PITA to get undone when rusted on - much faster to just cut them off and replace and no matter how you look at it new has to be better than old!

I think your mechanic is being cautious and smart. Much of your cost is labor, so once he has dismantled the front end, go ahead and replace the struts also. You did not say what the mileage of your car is, but 60, 70, or 80,000 miles is good life for a strut. DEFINITELY REPLACE BOTH SIDES. As for cost, I can't comment. Ask him what kind of struts he is getting. Consider if you want to upgrade to Bilstein or Koni. Good luck.

The cost seems reasonable to me - parts cost may go up if the strut bearings have failed as well as the mounts (same labor). A bad bearing might become evident only after the strut is removed.

One question is whether both sides are really bad. I replaced one front strut mount a year or so back, and the other has shown no signs of failing so far. I am sure it will but I did not see good sense in replacing it beforehand.

Similar for rear shock mounts - I've replaced both, but at least 3 years apart.

Some pro mechanics will not want to do just one side - and in truth you may have both sides bad. You can lift the hood and wiggle either strut mount. The one that is bad will wiggle around very easily.

This would depend on your budget, but I personally would not replace the struts themselves unless one of them is actually broken or leaking. They do soften over time but so does everything else in this world. In the case of struts, replacing just one is not a good plan - car would likely ride and handle very unevenly.

An additional common source of front end noise is loose or broken stabilizer (sway bar) links. Your tech probably checked for this.

check out prices at eeuroparts.com -
http://www.eeuroparts.com/searchresults.aspx?&carid=1711&cat=1033

Depending on which struts - looks like strut bearing $60 & strut bushing $20 for $160 in parts, heavy duty struts $140x2= $280. Total $440 for parts by mail order

depending on what struts and where you get parts can be big difference - IPD can run $190+ for a strut...

So you be the judge. But most of the job is labor and involves specialized tools, so as long as struts out makes sense to replace if they are old. I have a mechanic that lets me order parts and he will do labor. Maybe yours would do that too.