Home Rennovationguys (1 Viewer)

[glvsav37]

Calling anyone with experience in fairly large scale home renovation.

Looking to add a den, 1/2 bath and laundry/utility room on the side of my house. Would be a whole new structure and tie directly into the side of the house with only a single, large opening from the current exterior wall joining the new area.

Nothing overly complicated, would involve a new basement under it with an outside entrance, some AC rerouting and typical plumbing, electric and heat (baseboard). Only real luxury would be adding a fireplace and some large, designer-type windows in the front.

Then, as a phase 2, we will be redoing our kitchen and capturing the existing den for one large eat-in kitchen space which would involve removing some minor walls and adding a few others (nothing structurally), redoing and expanding the tile and moving some water/electricity b/c we want to reorganize the appliance layout.

we have a full basement with access to any of the plumbing and electric.

We just hired the architect, we were fortunate to find the same guy who designed our house originally, so he knows the bones and little oddities that would otherwise cause problems to pop up once you begin opening walls. Once we have plans, we will begin getting quotes from contractors

however, we are considering GC'ing this ourselves. We would hire my FIL (who is unemployed right now and has lots of time) to oversee the construction. He has manufacturing experience and has done an extension on his house as well. We would still have full and final say, but he can be there to supervise the day to day, help schedule and be the main contact.

Is there a benefit (cost, control, etc) over going this route, or should we just give the job to a single contractor? I know there are a bunch of sheetrock, plumbers and other general trade guys out there, but will general construction guys (building the shell, and main structure) even take on a structure-only type job w/o getting the whole thing?

any thoughts or experiences would be appreciated....

 

[El Floppo]

obvious cost-savings in GCing yourself.

quality control over items/details/etc.. if you're knowledgeable enough to know quality.

responsibility for arranging and receiving all shipments (something arrives broken or missing a piece- you have to track it down)

responsibility for coordinating all subs- quality of bids/company, timing of trades, etc, etc.

eta: I'm used to hiring GCs (I'm an architect) who sub almost everything out. They have a PM off-site arranging hiring, buying, schedules, ordering, shipments, etc. On-site job super who handles day-to-day site construction and coordination of subs. 1 or 2 helper kids who do non-sub work as required, keep job site clean and carry stuff. Subs do everything else.

 

[Dan Lambskin]

Wouldn't it be cheaper to move?

 

[glvsav37]

Wouldn't it be cheaper to move?

yes/no.

we want to stay in our general area b/c my wife teaches in the same school all of our kids go to, so our available market is very small. We've been looking for a while at resale and there is very little out there that we like for our price range.

the other aspect is that I can have my house paid off in under 10 years. When the interest rates dropped, we refied at a seriously low rate and have been able to pay it down a bunch. If we moved to a bigger house, at current rates and where the prices are for what we want, there is no way I could stay on track to have my house paid off by then.

We are the original owners of this house and we put everything into it exactly the way we want—decks, sheds, walkways, fences, etc. anywhere we move, we are looking at eventually redoing some or most of those anyway. This renno would not touch any of those besides ripping up some grass and removing a few sections of fence.

we've played all the scenarios, and we feel this is the best one.