| Finishing my first build now. It was a tear down of an old house and replaced with a slightly larger ( ~ 4200sqft ), custom house on the same footprint. A different design ( curved roof and lots of glass ), but less site work ( e.g. driveway, well, retaining walls, etc already in place ). Rough timeline ( just under two years from start to finish ):
- starting looking seriously in Nov 2016
- Found property in Jan 2017 and closed on April 2017
- interviewed half a dozen GCs / architects, had one lined up by May 2018
- basic design / layout of house done by July 2018
- started permit process in July 2018
- Demo'd existing house Nov 2018
- All permits finally approved Dec 2018
- Construction Dec 2018 - present ( projected finish Oct 2018 ) What I learned: + If this is your first house and you don't have experience, hire the best general contractor you can find for your project. Hire a general contractor prior to selecting a site if possible, as they would be very helpful in helping you with the pros and cons of each build site. Your choice of contractor is one of the biggest choicest you can make in terms of how enjoyable the process will be. The best way you can automate the process is your selection of GC. + We worked with a design/build firm that did both the architectural work + the contracting. + The general contractor is CEO. You are the Chairperson of the Board. Your role isn't making day to day decisions, but rather finding a CEO that can perform the job, providing what he or she needs to do the job you asked ( mainly timely money and decisions ), and confirming the job has been done. + Minimize change orders, but don't be afraid to make changes during the construction. Decisions get exponentially more expensive to change as you go along. We only had one change order --- ripped out a sliding door and replaced it with a window. That change, which would have only cost $75 at drafting time, cost us ~$5k. However, if we had waited until the project was finished the cost would have been $8-10k+. Also know, that if you ask for an estimated cost on a change order or add-on during construction, expect it to actually cost 25-50%. + Even seasoned pros make mistakes. Accept upfront that mistakes / delays will happen. If you stress about every mistake and try to optimize everything, you'll drive yourself crazy. Focus on avoiding the mistakes that would be prohibitively expensive to fix properly. + Permitting time is a lot longer than you think. We hired the site engineer in July and didn't get approved permits until Dec ( there was never any push back on the permits, but they all had long processing times and could not be run in parallel. |