Building a house - self-contract?

You know how all of your bids are over? Well that's also what will happen when you are contracting out work.

the bids are local contractors. they have been $50K or 60K over. Sure we could start back at square one and draw new smaller house, but we love the plans we have now. Guess i want to know whats the time commitment and fustration involved?

You obviously can't afford it

Contracting it yourself is certainly doable. I did it with very limited experience in the industry and it it's not that complicated. Having said that there is certainly more risk in doing it yourself and it's not for everyone.

I had a very flexible work schedule which allowed me to be on site a lot during the construction. I also had some friends with experience and knowledge in construction whom I leaned on for advice.

If your bids are coming in that much over budget you need to go back to the drawing board and come up with another plan or wait and save some more money.

Self-contracting is quite do-able if you have the time and patience. If you work 9-5 and have kids with activities in the evening, it may not be the best option for you. Typically when using a contractor, you can expect a bid between approx. $100-$125 a square foot depending on what you want. When subbing it out these days, prepare yourself for around $80-$100 a square foot, again depending on what you want.

Lastly, I know you didn't come here for a lecture, but this is the OT and you're going to get one anyway. Maybe you can't afford a 3,400 sq foot house?! There's nothing wrong with that. Unless you have 5 or more kids, that seems excessive anyway. I assume your budget is around $300k based on the info you provided, which you'll probably go over even if you do sub-contract for that much house. I personally would either sit down and take a hard look at my floor plans and see if I can trim a few things down, or be prepared to do a nice chunk of work on your own while subbing the rest out.

Did you get any rough estimates prior to having your plans drawn? We're about to build our second home and it definitely helps to have a ballpark PPSQF that you know will get focer amenities you want and then go into the design phase. It would suck to design a dream home ony to find out you can't afford it?

This has been discussed at length before so do a search and you will find some more helpful tips.

You can self contract but finding reliable subs can be difficult. The contractors already have relationships with good (or good enough) subs and know who to use and who not to use.

Expect it to take much longer than you figure and 50% of the working days there will be nobody onsite. Waiting for subs will eat up a lot of time.

Unless you can stop by the job daily or twice daily it can be very difficult to keep tabs on who has come and gone and have any type of quality control.

That's another thing. If you get a sub who does some substandard work it can be very difficult to get them to come back and fix it, especially if they have been paid already.

That seems high

Eta: especially for Thibodeaux

I'm getting bids for mine right now