Not much experience since it the first huge remodel in my life(hopefully the last one too lol)..the house is not new but was gutted to studs etc..so much like a build.

Now to sharing the experience: our builder is a very modern style kind of a guy, and his clients are usually too.

The house is traditional, and in a particular style that we loved, and didn't want neither to mess it, not to overdo.

He took it as a challenge-it was interesting to him to try and work on a different type of a house.

Some of his suggestions were amazing, some didn't have any relation whatsoever to what we wanted to do.

So we didn't go with anything that seemed wrong to us:) He's a builder; he's not a designer.

Later, each time he agreed with us when a thing he didn't like theoretically, turned out beautiful.

In the end of the day, what's important to you, is a great quality of work, great and clear communication that allows the project to run as smoothly as possible, honesty, good subs, and his physical ability to be on the site as much as he can (how many project he runs at once? how far the crew has to go to arrive to your place? etc.)

The only thing that went wrong, and I think went wrong because we were a different type of a house, was a fireplace..everybody apparently prefers such and such, and we didn't. He had no experience with it, and handled it badly.

Of course many other things went wrong(and many didn't))-but I don't think it had any connection to him being more of modern style builder.

I'd love to hear other opinions..it's an interesting question.

As for having to interview many people-it's extremely busy time now in construction. No wonder many don't take new jobs at all at this point. Our GC doesn't-the schedule he has is crazy. Not great for us as well. At least we're kinda close to being done..

Hi Germain,

I would not hire a traditional builder to build a modern home. Here are some of my reasons:

1. Modern style requires a certain amount of finesse and nuance that is different from the Traditional build. An example is the lack of moulding and trim in modern space. This is very hard for someone who is always doing trim to think about how to build a space without it.
2. The shear size of windows in a modern home is also something Traditional builders don't usually deal with.
3. Roof styles are also very different, flat roofs, Butterfly wing and other complex modernists roofs are not something traditional builders take kindly too.
4. Modern design builds upon very minute structural modifications that once a mistake is made in the build, it propagates to all levels of the build in a modern design. There is no where to hide mistakes because of the lack of ornate finishings in modern design.

Builders, traditional or modern, are mainly creatures of habit and will do what they know. Trying to convince a traditional builder to do Modern work can be a very frustrating experience. You also, don't know what all the nuances are that go into a design and may not be able to help.

I don't know a builder in New Jersey but I do know of one in NYC, Res4 may be able to lead you to some who is more familiar with modern building design. A really good blog is Buildllc blog in Seattle. One of my favorite blogs about a build is A house by the Park.

By the way, did you get my email about the windows?

We're also in the Jersey burbs, and our experience in finding a contractor was very similar to yours - so don't take the lack of bids (or grossly high bids) personally.

As for the other question - a family we know here had a very modern house built recently by a contractor who mostly does traditional homes. While the house looks amazing from a distance, up close it looks pretty mediocre, and they have had several problems with leaky roofs/windows, etc. Since there are so few details in the house, everything has to be perfect or it sticks out. Every hairline joint crack, every slightly misaligned light switch, every tiny smudge of caulk.

We had a very similar experience and we are on the west coast. We had one guy say "sorry, I thought you had a different kind of house, this is more complicated than we usually do." Another one went on vacation and we never heard from him again. That kind of thing.

We chose the old school guys with 2 generations and decades of experience between them. They didn't really have that much experience building modern, though. And it shows in some areas.

I was over at their office a couple months after our home was finished and they were poring over a modern style elevation. "We learned a lot of things building your home. Hopefully this one will be easier."

Great.

We were 1400 miles away so I was not able to view things day by day and make corrections. Our architect had done a good job of making our program as tight as he could make it, but builders still need to make dozens of little decisions on the fly.

If I was to do it all over again I would say something like "look, for this kind of design and this kind of money I expect a very particular attention to the details. I will be here daily and as long as you understand my goal is to faithfully construct this home as designed by the architect, I can help you with the details and expect to be consulted on all decisions. If you are ok with that the job is yours. If you are not ok then we will keep looking."

There are about 10 things I wish I could go back and have a voice in the decision making process. Over all our builder was competent and he got the job done and stayed pretty much within the contracted amount. So I guess you can't have everything.

Good luck.

Simple ain't easy.

Assuming your guy "gets it" then it's okay. He needs to realize:

• his normal subs may not be up to the task
• finishes will need to be at a higher level because they will be less adorned with fussy things
• your architect may be more involved / you may be more involved because it's your vision
• he cannot just make his normal traditional decisions - you will need to be consulted

To be fair - he may be building traditional because he's building spec and "neo-traditional" seems to be what sells. (sigh)