Do you honestly think you want to build your own house????

In August 2006 my husband and I purchased a lot in one of the Hecht Development communities.  Since I have worked for a builder in the past, represent a slew of builders currently, and have family in the construction industry, I thought I could handle acting as my own general contractor.  Whew…I have a newfound respect for the job superintendents and the builders.   Now luckily, I had a couple of the builders that I represent to rely on to help me with subcontractors and with what should be done next and one of the site superintendents actually became like a father to me during the building process. 

Once the permits were pulled and we could actually break ground, it was a joyous time for me and I was at the job site just about every day.   I think the framer was ready to kill me by the time he was finished framing the house.  I just kept finding little things that needed to be changed in the initial stages — luckily he and I became pretty good friends during the process as well.   I pretty much knew what I wanted the house to look like but of course there would be two of us living in the house so I had to keep my husband as involved in the process as possible and we didn’t always see eye to eye but overall the interior and exterior design of the house was pretty easy to finalize.  Being in new home sales I had the fortune (if you can call it that) of seeing a lot of new homes and a lot of new “must haves” in new construction.    Of course I wanted it all…but “it all” comes with a price tag and we had to figure out just what the budget would accommodate.  

Everything went along pretty well until we made the mistake of being the guinea pig for a new sheetrock company that one of the builders was going to begin using.  The builder had seen the company’s work and was really impressed so they thought they would be great at our house and they wanted to get future work so they gave us a great deal on hanging and finishing the sheetrock, as well as doing the painting.  Well, after my house they were not used by any of the builders that I represent.  They took three weeks to hang and finish our sheetrock and then they just told us we would have to find someone else to paint — I knew right then that we were going to have major issues with the sheetrock.  We found a painter that had a sheetrock company as well and they came in to try to fix the issues.  They sent three separate sheetrock crews to try to fix the problems we had with our drywall — I think we would have been better off just ripping it out and starting over.  It is still not great but we can live with the way that it turned out. 

It seemed that the completion of the house began to drag on and on.  Many of my subcontractors work for builders that keep them busy all throughout the year.  I just have one house and then I am pretty much done (unless I can refer them to one of the other builders I represent — which I played that card a lot during the process) so I wound up getting put on the back burner.  Basically, there was “a bigger paycheck on the other line” so my job would get put off til the next day or the next week or just whenever they could get out there to finish up.  It is really frustrating to see the house so close to completion and no one working for days at a time. 

The next really big mistake we made was hiring a landscaper that made a lot of promises that he was not able follow through with.  I thought my husband and I would get divorced over this one…it will have to be a post for another day however our attorney has advised us that we can file criminal charges against him and win pretty easily. 

Overall, I love coming home to the house that my husband and I pretty much designed and built, however at times I just wonder how much we really saved by doing it ourself.  When you look at the length of time it took us to get it completed, the few issues that we had with subcontractors and just the time that it pulled us away from our own jobs and careers, we may have been better off hiring a licensed GC to get it done on schedule and on budget.