In article , NMB98 @webtv.net says... ~ I hope you can help. I'll try to keep it short & to the point. ~ We have a VERY small old house and are planning to remodel. Plans are ~ drawn & submitted - we await the permits and variance from the town, ~ should have all of it in (I hope) 7-9 months. Scope of job: almost ~ complete demo of the crap we live in now to add a second floor w/ 3 BRs, ~ new kitchen, expand current living area. Lots of walls to be torn out, ~ stairways moved- basically adding about 1000 feet of space to our tiny ~ house. ~ ~ My husband thinks he can act as the "project manager" and coordinate & ~ hire all the tradesmen that have to come in and do their part. His ~ motivation is to save money by cutting out the GC . I say this is ~ impossible for him to do for this huge renovation, and I can think of a ~ thousand reasons why he shouldn't.
Unless the trades don't have enough work in your area (unlikely), it's not a good idea. It probably won't save you a cent, will undoubtedly take you longer, and will likely not be as well built. Good experienced renovation contractors have a stable of subs they call on. They know which subs are reasonably priced, reliable, and easy to manage. That's what they'll look for since they want the job to be easy and profitable. They won't necessarily take the cheapest subs since they know the real cost includes the price AND the cost of solving problems. Without that stable of subs, you're really in a pickle. You won't have a clue who is good and who isn't, and you'll be the last person on the subs' list of priorities. They'll expect you to do ONE job in your lifetime, whereas a GC will have them back job after job after job if they deliver. Who do you think they'll try to please?
Renovation contractors and subs almost always over-commit when things are busy. They juggle jobs by showing up periodically and making a little progress. They are able to make more money by taking on more jobs than they can handle at once, then working a little on each one of them. It allows them to nail down more work, but at the expense of the homeowners, who end up having to wait a lot longer than promised. You're probably going to experience some of this even with a GC, but it will be a lot worse without one. This will make your project take much longer -- even twice as much as you initially estimated.
A major renovation may take longer than building a whole new house. We're building a new home after demolishing ours last July. It will be complete in 4 weeks -- 7 months in all, and only a month late. Our neighbours a few houses away decided on a major renovation which they started 2 weeks before we demolished our old house. Their home won't be complete for at least 3 months.
If your hubby is still determined to go ahead with this despite his inexperience, he ought to have his head examined.
Rick