The contract templates of most interest to you as the homeowner are the “Series A” AIA documents.  These are the agreements set forth between the owner and the contractor.  Remember, in the absence of having an architect perform contract and project administration for your home remodel, you should change the sections to say “Owner” instead of  “Architect” where applicable.  Here’s a brief rundown of what each document is used for…

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By now, you’ve made some sort of decision on whether or not to accept any of your contractors’ bids or to boldly take on your home remodeling project on your own.  In either case, having well drafted contracts and other agreements are an absolute imperative.  It can potentially prevent a lot of heartache in the future when things go awry.  What they say is absolutely true - your home remodeling project will go awry in some form or fashion.   Having your contracts spell out who is responsible for what when things don’t go as plan helps protect everyone involved in the process.

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After you have received all your bids and have “normalized” them by questioning assumptions and variances, it’s time to narrow your selection.  We took the two bids from our two contractors and asked them to sharpen their pencil by going over the bid and adjusting assumptions for finishes before getting to final bids.

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It’ll take at least a couple of weeks if not longer for your solicited general contractors to get back to you with high level numbers.  Make sure you set expectation on when they should get back to you by.  When their proposal and bid is ready, meet each general contractor to go over the numbers.  Don’t be surprised by the range in which the bids come back.  Our bids ranged from 620K to as much as 820K.  All bids being way over our anticipated numbers.

Continue reading “Art of Soliciting the Bid - Part II” »

After our first set of revisions were done, it was now time to start soliciting bids from general contractors.  There are many ways to do this, and we chose to engage with five general contractors and then narrow down the field to a negotiated bid with a select vendor.  All but one of the general contractors we engaged with were referred to us by either friends or by our architect or by both.  The general contractor that we ended up going with was referred to us by a stucco subcontractor that we had spoken to previously because we liked his work and wanted him to do our stucco.

Continue reading “Art of Soliciting the Bid - Part I” »

The planning department was a breeze compared to what we would encounter at the building department for our city.  Everything was efficiently reviewed in the planning department within six weeks.  Getting approval from the building department and being issued our permits would take six months - to our utter dismay.  It was almost always expected that there would be redline notes on our plans.  Our architect had warned us that no plan every submitted would come back with immediate approval not matter how simple the project.

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We had our plans done by our architect, the structural engineering performed by an engineer, the soils report finished by the geotech.  By now we had amassed $10K in just soft costs and we hadn’t broken any ground (other than the soil sample core drilling on our lot).  Now came the hardest part - the waiting game.  It’s a myth that if you are a homeowner of a single family home that you pretty much have the flexibility to do anything you want with your home.  If you value having a permit and rather not run the risk of getting a stop order (affectionately known as a “red tag” and not one of the ones found at appliance store sales) slapped onto your front door to cease and desist activity or face heft fines - you must go through your city or county hall to receive permits.

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After spending oodles of time with our architect working on a design, we had to start thinking about the structural requirements to support the floor plans were envisioning.  The largest piece of the puzzle when it came to structural engineering was the foundation, most especially since we lived on a cut and fill lot in the hills.  In our city, there are two zones of classification - A and B.  If you were in the A zone you were pretty much in the flat lands of our city.  If you were in the B zone you were on a hillside subject to all the great caveats for hillside living including: landslide, seismic concerns, drainage and or flooding.

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One very key trait that your architect should have is a current handle on constructions costs.  Your architect should be experienced working with a wide gambit of general contractors ranging from all points of the cost spectrum.  Every home remodel requiring the help of an architect to design inevitably goes through a cost reduciton phase.  It’s very easy to throw in everything including the kitchen sink (literally) and come up with a great design for a home remodel that you can’t afford.

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My wife and I were quite pleased working with our architect.  He was a local architect which is very desirable because he was known by the planning and building officials at city hall.  This is extremely important.  If you do end up working with an architect you want to find someone who’s familiar with your city’s specific building codes and understands what it will take to get your plans through the building department.  The more plans they have submitted on behalf of their clients to get approved - the better.  Building officials will still scrutinize every last detail of the plans, but they’ll be used to working with your architect’s style, thinking and other nuances.

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