So if you were charging a fixed project management fee, and your PM kept making a bunch of mistakes and being generally inefficient and unproductive, causing you to lose money on the job… are you keeping them around?

Not likely.

But in your case, all the risk is on you.

Speaking with the few other builders and subs I know, the project management fee for large customs runs about C$10K a month. For anyone who thinks that's unreasonable, consider I'm now paying C$75 an hour for framing carpenters. (Most work is by the job; but miscellaneous repairs, boxing and the like are by the hour.)

“Those of you with cost-plus contracts… who pays for mistakes? Ours is cost + % markup AND hourly project management.”

Generally, the person responsible for the mistake pays all costs necessary to correct the mistake. This can get a bit muddy because there are essentially mistakes and adjustments.

So, for example, suppose your lighting plan needs an adjustment because the plan was incompatible with the “as built” result. That would likely not be considered a mistake. However, suppose they were not properly adjusted before drywall was installed. Then removal and replacement of the drywall as well as supervision of that would be the builder’s responsibility, however, making the adjustment itself probably wouldn’t be.

The bigger problem is getting any builder to recognize that nuance… in the end, it often isn’t worth the fight.

So you have a builder and a project manager?

Legally, when we've project managed, the owner is considered the builder. We just act in their stead. Jurisdictions may have different rules.

@A C your cabinets are beautiful! Looks like your kitchen will be a really lovely space.

Worthy - we hired a builder as GC and they have a project manager handling our project. So legally I can’t do much in terms of talking to subs because of Tarion rules, apparently.

AC - looking good! I’m surprised you don’t have your flooring down yet, how does that work? I guess they just install it around the cabinetry and up to baseboards?

@izzieo: I asked the same question, as I found it to be a bit odd, as well. They say this is their usual order of things, so I’m hoping it turns out ok.

Yesterday they made a lot of progress on our roof and poured our garage floor! The builder told us this week we should get shingles, but today’s a holiday and I’m not sure how much will get done Friday. Either way, woohoo our subfloor will stop getting wet soon!

So far we know our overages for cabinetry, countertop, and plumbing fixtures. It wasn’t bad for what all we asked for. My recent dilemma is whether I should ask the builder if it’s too late to specify toilets. With being a small town custom builder, they let you select whatever or send links, but I think there’s some “defaults” they pick. I’m not sure if I should wait until further and be asked or if that would mean being too late to select. Also for some reason I’m just afraid to ask our builder too many questions. I think since this is our dream home, we just feel really excited and relieved it’s finally happening and don’t want to jinx or jeopardize it! But it’s expensive, so I need to get over that LOL.

You can't just weld steel on the flat to a "misplaced beam" and expect it to have any structural strength. Unless I'm missing something, you'd better get an engineer to take a look at that.

It's more a cosmetic than structural fix. The framing rests four-square on the beam. The veneer brick is attached to the posts and OSB resting on the beam, but the brick overhangs the beam by an inch more than allowed, according to the building inspector. A licenced P.Eng. provided the stamped plan the welder followed. And there's actually two plates.

Our first floor is framed, the second floor has a floor, the garage and front porch block foundation are finished, and we ordered our windows and exterior doors. So far everything has gone smoothly! I am so pleased with how everything looks and how the house “feels” - which is a relief because I drew the plans myself and handed them off to be professionally engineered. So, any layout issues are mine to own (but no complaints so far!). This photo looks across our dining room, through the (future) sliding door, across the (future) porch, and beyond.

Wow J B that’s a nice view!

I felt the same relief when I saw my drawn floor plan come to life with floors and walls. It’s very cool to have a one of a kind design!

Thanks D! We’ve lived in a renovated farmhouse on the same property for almost 20 years. It really is beautiful, and it changes with the seasons. We have a large barn and other acreage that aren’t shown in that photo.

Your build seems to be going well! I think we both started around the same time.

AC @webuser-451920017 3 weeks to complete & inspect looks difficult assuming all finishes are onsite & ready.

counters, backsplashes, flooring, base or base shoe, appliances, island light fixtures, plumbing?

Balance of interior? Exterior?

What toilets are people going with nowadays? I’m liking the skirted design with dual flush, but it seems like toilets are taller than the old ones we have in our current house. Is chair height the norm now? My husband’s average height, I’m 5’3, and we have 3 kids in the house so far, so I don’t want something just for tall people.

Also, do you guys think it’s weird when strangers walk in your house? We had our first occurrence of an older couple and their off leash dog just wandering around inside. We’re at the end of a lane almost outside of town, so it was kind of odd for strangers to end up at our house. Anyway, we went over and they didn’t seem the least bit off guard about us finding them there. Maybe I just think it’s weird because I wouldn’t go into someone’s house uninvited and would probably ask to get a tour if I was really interested! Soon we’ll have doors so people can just lookie loo from outside. Also, we don’t have a dog, so it’s weird to have someone else invite theirs into our home. Like what if it would’ve had an accident on our subfloor? Lol

We are going to do chair height, but we are all on the taller side, and our kids are tweens/teens. If we still had little ones, we would do standard height in their bathroom at least.

I would be very angry if a stranger went into our house. Not only for liability reasons, but because it’s none of their business what my layout is.

We're spending C$259.90 per month on temporary fence rental and C$770 for insurance liability, largely to protect ourselves from suits by looky-loos trespassing and injuring themselves in the process.

No not welcome!

Now installing remote cameras to monitor for trespassers with criminal intent.

While renoing a five-plex downtown, to deter "visitors" we provided one room and ensuite to a labourer in need of temporary accommodation.

Remind me to post more NO TRESPASSING signs.

***

As for w.c.s, all skirted. Like the modern look and they're much easier to clean. Also, all are "right" or "comfort" height. Never thought of using them until we moved into our current temporary house that has them. Definitely, much, much easier on aging limbs!

According to our plumbing wholesaler, the dual flush have fallen out of favour. Again, our current dwelling has them and they usually don't work.

the quest for a permit continues, meanwhile we cleared the solid brush from the driveway route by hand over several trips.

First load I cleared at least enough to stake a centerline up top. We are standing at the top edge of the road cut.

The truck is sitting on the edge of a farm road that bisects the route, and is at the approximate driveway grade at that point. We can call it the balance point, a 4' cut to the right under the truck and fills to the left in this picture.

Next trip my brother and I tunneled in from the bottom until the truck was full.

This will be the proverbial batcave of a driveway. 12' wide subgrade through there, 10' wide base rock and a 9' driveway. cut the cedar limbs

up 14' high to pass concrete trucks and our RV.

Today we daylighted the last of it. Now I can set a laser on the balance point, stake centerline with cuts and fills.

I haven’t posted since March, I think. We are still here (barely haha). I think the last I posted we were so excited to finally have a trim guy finish the exterior cornice, porches and siding. Well, that was the biggest blow of the build. He worked for a few days in May and built our exterior window casings, then started on the cornice. He left a few days after and never returned. I saw him leave at 10:30 am on our security camera up there. Then he texted my husband “idk we just aren’t used to working outside. My guys are treating to leave me I’ve this job. We can finish” and NEVER came back. Then we called the company that designed and supplied materials for the exterior woodwork. They gave us a contact that they were extremely confident with. He drove two hours to our house the next day. It seemed so promising. He said his rate was $90/hour for two guys. That’s a normal rate here. He said he wanted to bid out the job. I get an email the next day for $109,000!!!!!! Guys, the cornice is done on the main house except for 6 ft and a few returns. The porches and garage need their trims, plus siding put up. It was so wildly out of the ballpark. That was a massive blow. We never expected him to try that with us after meeting him and learning of his normal hourly rate. Fast forward to July.. we still have NO one to put this woodwork up. We’ve talked to countless people, met a lot at the house. No one wants to touch it. It’s not their normal work. Also a blow, our mason who we’ve had down to do the stonework for YEARS (he met us two years ago to make sure he wanted to work with the stone and did a sample for us before we bought all the materials) now does not have a crew that wants to lay it. He has ONE guy who wants to, the rest say no. It’s extremely heavy, big stone. So we’ve been meeting with masons all month, to no avail. No one wants to mess with it, says it’ll take months, their guys won’t wanna do it…

In positive news, drywall is DONE! So there’s that. We also finally picked up our doors that were due to be finished 16-20 weeks after we did a down payment last August. We’ve been painting our butts off trying to get them ready to be hung. The only person we can find to hang them is the guy who left us on the exterior cornice in May. Hope he actually shows up. I’ve been working on the order for interior trims, stair parts, mantles and interior doors. Cabinets are suppose to be up done in September. Slowly but surely we will get done, but idk if it’ll happen before winter. We desperately would love to be done and enjoy the slow season together without a house build looming over us

Our drywall and doors

@agbhw wow that is an awful situation to be in! Do you live in a smaller town with less tradespeople? Glad to hear drywall is at least done!

Update from us is that 80% of our roof is shingles! We’re missing a patch above the front of the house (not pictured), and it appears that the roofers just ran out of shingles. Our local build center just drove them over on a skidsteer last time, so hopefully it doesn’t take long to get a bit more delivered.

We’ve got a few windows on the back of the house now installed, and the rest are sitting in our garage. There’s a bang door on our mudroom door that now stays locked to keep visitors from easy access. The entry stoop is still a deep pit, so you’d have to jump across in order to get in that way. We’re supposed to get the code or key but haven’t yet, luckily if you walk to the back of the house you can get in through the basement and unlock the bang door from the inside. Now our annoyance is we’ve found the neighbors dogs inside our garage a few times. We don’t have dogs (just cats at the moment), so it’s annoying to have them in our new house.

Anyway, we’re excited to see some more progress! We heard back on our living room patio, and we won’t know if we’ll have a railing/stairs until the final grade when our house is torn down. We’d prefer to bring in dirt if needed just to avoid seeing a railing/stairs outside our main living area.

A few more pictures, these are our primary bath windows (I need to give that shed a makeover so it’s not an eyesore) and the window above our bed. We’ve slept under a window for the past three years, so wanted one above the bed in this house too.

We live in a very small town: there is a large town an hour away and two cities that are both two hours away. We are doing some many things that aren’t the norm around here and it’s making it pretty difficult to find people self contracting the house like that because are doing.

I know that feeling - major cities are 1.5 hours away. Luckily our main hurdles have just been explaining contemporary/transitional things we want that aren’t normal in rural Iowa.. we’re the builder’s first marble countertop install and they’ve been in business since 2000. They had to find their first marble fabricator! I also had to push for smooth walls instead of textured. Nothing wrong with textured, but I grew up with smooth walls finished by my dad and prefer the look for my home. I did however agree to forgetting about smooth ceilings and do light texture instead. It’s been give and take! 😃

My typos!! I don’t know what’s happening to my comments but I was not aware of all of the typos when submitting! 🫠

What interesting experiences and pics here of real people building real houses. (A contrast with many other threads here!)

**

We're on the fringe of an urban centre approaching 7 million. So it's hard to drive a mile or two without running into a couple dozen cabinetmakers, flooring stores, ceramic shops and, of course, a Big Box or two! Too many choices!

Not short of wildlife either!

Brer Fox among the Bobcats on our front yard-to-be! (He likes the cool shade they throw,)

@agbhw That's unfortunate to hear about all the delays! Hopefully you can find the people you need!

We're so close! We've had some delays with permits, but should be in by the end of the month. Planning to take it slow on decorating and landscaping.

@pgjs looking good!! I like the kitchen countertop! Also the green or blue square tile looks awesome. I assume it was a random pattern? It looks like a checkered design!

Congrats @pgjs - that wood ceiling is so beautiful! Looks like things have worked out nicely, finally!

We have various crises going on but the flooring was installed and we love it for the most part… I fail to understand why the guy included some very short boards in some central/visible spots but oh well… hard to know if it was thoughtless or if he had it out for us because he was unhappy about whatever. Just seems odd to use like 2 ft boards in a living area or bedroom rather than at the end of a wall or under cabinets. Sometimes common sense is not so common!

@D Michael Thank you! It's zellige tile and I really like the variation it has. I assume it's random. The tile setter didn't mention if they were doing anything special when laying it out.

@izzieo Thank you! So glad to be done with decision making! There were definitely some miscommunications, but I'm overall happy with how things turned out.

Your floor is so pretty! Hopefully they'll be less noticeable once furniture is in.

pgjs -

Fantastic update photos. Once you start cooking and living with your kitchen, please post your experience with the soapstone countertops. They are stunning.

-Laurie

I think anyone who finishes building must just be happy to survive… regardless of all the details that did not turn out how you wanted 😂

Saw some cool stuff today! We have a pocket door thing installed, our shower bench and one of the pony walls has been framed, and our bedroom patio has a subfloor! We also picked up the last of our tile, this marble is going on our primary bath floor. Sounds like plumbing rough ins on the main floor will be done sometime this week, and the remainder of our shingles will be here Friday. It was weird to go in today and see everything was cleaned up and swept! It feels like we’re moving ahead and have all of our blocking done, woohoo!

Siding is mostly done. We got countertops in this week also. They now tell us we'll be done at the end of August, but I have serious doubts. Every month it gets moved another month later. At the end of August, they'll be telling us it will be done at the end of Sept, and on it goes.

AC - looking great! Very cozy and I love your nice covered porch area (also yours D Michael!)

Maybe you will be in for end of Aug! Seems impossible but it is amazing what can be done in a month.

If every single thing involving pretty much all of our trades goes according to plan over the next 2 months - we should be done at the end of September. 🤣 Super realistic.

AC and d Michael looking good! Though our progress is quite slow, our siding is close to wrapping up and the metal roof will be going on after that. Stone finally going on the chimney as well and it looks great. Front door finally in!

@TDinNC everything looks great! Love the stone work! 👍

@izzieo I can’t agree more. We’ve been in our home for 2 months. It took us 2 1/2 years to build. It was painful and we went waaaay over budget. That said, we couldn’t be happier every morning when we wake up. Time and pure joy heals the pain of building. Best of luck to you all!

K_Dub - it looks great!! Your words give us all hope!

Just popping in from the other side of the finish line to cheer everyone on! We’ve been in our house for a little over a month and it took a us a little over a year to build. I keep repeating the mantra “home takes time” as I walk around my house and run up a list of decorative things that still need to be purchased. One thing that I wish I heard more of from other people building is that it takes a minute for the house to get used to having occupants. Bugs were used to living in our home while it was vacant so we’ve had to evict them. Power went out a few times when we 1st moved in as the electrical was getting used to being used 24/7. Even our water heater took a few weeks to adjust to being used. Keep a few handymen on speed dial for small fixes as you move in and spot things that you probably didn’t notice when you were just visiting. Sharing some pics of the house pre move in since it’s still a work in progress.

More pics

Ooooh looks so pretty, congratulations! Is the dark room your bedroom, or office maybe? I think we’re doing our bedroom SW Urbane Bronze and I am so terrified to see how it turns out hahah! Still debating whether to do the ceiling light or dark though.

I am finally making some good progress! The kitchen is installed, not quite complete but pretty close. Amazing to see my design come to life. I am sooo happy with how it has turned out so far!

Two homes so well suited to their surroundings! Like all that black metal!

*****

Still plugging along here, embarrassed at my laggardly pace--14 mos. I'm too nice, says mrs. worthy, letting some slacker trades delay progress.

At last, finalizing cabinetry. Meanwhile, readying our current house for market in two months: new roof etc.

A hive of inactivity! (Momentary, I hope.)

@izzieo the dark room is our bedroom. SW green black. It’s the room that gets the most reaction out of guests in a good way. Also, your home is stunning!!! Wow!!

Bugs were used to living in our home while it was vacant so we’ve had to evict them.

Any special measures?

We've always frequently swept, blown and vacuumed construction debris and tracked-in soil. And sealed the joint between wall and floor in the basement with silicone. Every home has a world of insects. I like to keep them in the walls.

I am back across the state helping with that cabin build. I am backfilling and helping with subfloor today, and I think we have a crew of two young guys showing up tomorrow to help stack the logs. My job? keep my butt in the seat of that forklift.

I found this large piece of petrified wood yesterday. We are 1500' above the Columbia River and it makes you wonder about this tree's origin story. Lake Missoula backed up to this elevation several ice ages.

@worthy we had the exterminators come out twice so far which has helped. The last tech that came out told us to buy some windex (not the natural stuff). Ants are the most common pest that they see in new construction. He said to spray the ant trail with windex. I guess the ammonia in it deters them. We haven’t seen an ant since we sprayed windex in one spot in the garage.

Oooh @worthy, it’s coming along! I am kind of dying to see your interior design because it is going to be quite modern.

Chandllerin I love your bedroom! Great choice, it makes the greenery outside really stand out. Now I feel like I might need to go all the way and do a dark ceiling…