Re-building home
 

i am about to take a big leap of faith and plan on rebuilding my 1940's world war bungalow home. knocking it down and rebuilding from scratch

asides from the few dozen of permits.
does anyone have any suggestions on designers and builders?
i am also thinking of putting myself as a builder and lining up contractor myself.
this will be a bit more headache.. but i can potentially save 30k..

any suggestions will be great!

thanks

Are you planning on making a custom home or are you gonna go the route of purchasing plans for home already designed out of a magazine or website? Custom home design can get pretty pricey.

As for builders, I'm not familiar with the contractors and builders in the residential sector.

Depending on the complexity of the home and the materials you want to use, it can be extremely time consuming to be the project manager. How hands on are you going to be? Do you have the kind of job where you can take time off to manage the construction of the house? You might save money buy doing things yourself, but you'd also earn less money if you're always gonna be on the job site. After all when you hire a contractor, you're paying him to deal with a lot of the BS also.

Honestly, DIY Network and their website can help you on A LOT of things if you plan on renovating your home yourself. A lot of questions can be answered on their site.

He said he was gonna knock the whole house down and start from scratch. The DIY is great, but there's some things they really don't prepare you for, especially if it's on the scale of the whole house. DIY is good for finishes, and minor reno's. Doing things like foundation work, sanitary/sanitary lines and electrical work...if you don't do em right, you just pay more in the end to fix it.

If you do plan on doing your own work, another great way is to do the work, and get hire a professional to double check your work and it'll cost a lot less that way and you'll know if you did it right or not.

If you have no experience doing this you could be setting yourself up for some real headaches. It can be done for sure but the question you have to ask yourself is at what cost and in what time frame. The advantage of hiring a Contractor is they obviously set everything up for you as far as bringing in subs and they know what needs to be done in what time frame to get the job done in a time efficient manner. If you have no building experience you might run into a lot of snags that in the end could possibly end up costing you and not saving you. If you get a good GC they have regular subs they use all the time and know how reliable they are and what their workmanship is like. You hiring your own subs could get you in trouble just try and use due diligence and remember no money up front and take a holdback of 10% (that's what it is on commercial projects I'm assuming residential is the same) off any draws that you don't release until all work is complete to a satisfactory level.

I manage projects for our company and we only do one piece of the puzzle (framing, drywall and ceilings) and knowing what to do when is important to making money and getting things done efficiently. Even though I've been doing this for years I still don't think I'd attempt to manage the construction of my own home as it's out of my area of expertise and I don't want the headaches.

You can do it for sure but just make sure you know what your getting yourself into and what steps you need to take when as time is probably the most important thing as it really is money in construction.

if your going to contract things out yourself, make sure you get the same contractor to do the large critical portions of each part of the process

IE. try to get the foundation form company to either A) provide their own framers, or B) recomend framers they use

thanks for all the feedback..

i might put myself as the builder and hire a GC and let him manage most of the stages. i do not have much construction experience, but i have experience dispatching stages of project.

looks like the outgoing rate is around $150sq/ft...
it does sound like alot of headache.. but when there are 5 digit savings, it may be worth it.

i need to find a designer/ architect for the initial drawing. just going thru the phone book.. any recommendation?

$150sq/ft for what?

If you want to browse through architecture firms that are registered in BC, go to the website:
http://aibc.memberpro.net/main/body....s&page_id=3045

Do a search using "Residential Single". You can look them up based on the city. If you're looking for an architect to design your home, it's gonna cost quite a bit. I know firms typically for an intermediate architectural technologist typically bill out about $80-120/hr.

BTW...if you're gonna be approaching architectural firms, most of them will ask what size of home you're looking to design. If the square footage is too small, most firms won't even touch it depending on how busy they are.

ic. phase 1 is to find a design..
if the architech approach is too much, i may just buy a blueprint on line.

150sq/ft for land size.. sooo.. if i want my home to be 3000 sq/ft... i multiply that by 150 for a rough cost.

living in one of the most expensive province in canada.. i have to try to get a mortgage on top of my mortgage to pull this one off.

I used this guy for having something drawn up for our warehouse recently. I believe it's a real small company, it might just be him working there? Anyway he did a good job and was easy to work with.

http://www.exactdraft.com/index.html

I'd just get a general contractor,

You should go with an architect and a engineer for the design phase and talk on how you want the house build, what materials. But when acutally building the house, get a general contractor that is trusted, for your build.

I've dealt with a house, that a lawyer thinking he could do it ended up getting a nice house, but paying 30% more on everything cuz he didn't know the ins and outs of building a house, while he learned, the companies would charge him 10-30% more cuz he doesn't know the prices/labour for what he wanted.

Unless you get really hands on in the detail, exactly know what brands cost what, what jobs cost what, how much labour is involved, the time frame usually for it. It can get insanely tedious.

You POTENTIALLY can out pay what you do if you got someone else to build it.

i built my own home from scratch, it you have any questions pm me or if you want to know anything specifically i pm'ed you my number

heres a few things i recommend:

- quasi is a spot on about the contractors
- $150 square feet is about average for hiring someone else to do it for you
- "custom" is too expensive, what you want is a design thats already been done and you want it modified so it can be done on YOUR LOT. you can add things and move items around but you want a architect that will work with you
- start planning now, get permits done in jan, break ground march/april when is ALMOST spring, complete by september/october

Like Quasi stated, I wouldn't reccommend tackling this yourself if you have 0 construction experience. I've been in construction since i was 16 with my dad and I would not tackle the whole project myself, i would do the deficiencies at the end

i forgot to mention if you value your social life don't do it LOL


actually phase 1 isn't to find a designer right away.
you have to do an environmental assessment on the home you plan to build.
soil on existing home? peat? condition?
aspestist? insulation? (pipes, ducts), flooring? siding? drywall?
oil tank?
drywall? with aspestist?
insulation?

just some stuff to consider i.e. if you have peat you can basically flush 20k down the toilet

framing is #1

shit framing, shit house

building a house is alot of work especially if you dont know much

most people just hire a contractor and pay an extra 50000

150sq/ft is a basic house if you really want it to be different then expect to spend more

Do some homework first. With no construction exp , your just jumping into fire. You got subtrades from A to Z working with each other and it isnt smooth sailing. Thats only one of the tiny problems you got to deal with. Scheduling and money is always going to be a issue. If you plan to be the General Contractor get ready to dedicate your whole life to your project.

As a Sub-Contractor I've seen homeowners attempt to act as their own general contractors, and occasionally go even further try by doing some of the work themselves. I can tell you the results are never impressive.

Building a home is not a simple task that you can do overnight, and the concept that you can save money by not hiring a general contractor really isn't true. Consider that even after going through an apprenticeship a carpenter usually spends at least five years working for other people before their prepared to become builders. Over decades general contractors build relationships with their trades people, and as a result they know who's reliable and produces quality work; and tradespeople give them lower rates, so they can continue to receive their work. My company charges an average of 20% less for contractors than homeowners. So, really you save very little managing a project yourself. I would definitely recommend hiring a contractor you'll see the difference in quality.

Also, don't plan on paying less than $200 a square foot; $150 a square foot covers laminate floors, cheap carpet, and ikea cabinets.

$150/sqft is the vancouver specials, anything a little higher ranges from $180 to $200/sqft

depending on where your house is

good luck

thanks for all the feedback.
i've decided to just sell the home in the end.