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April 4, 2012 at 1:53 PM #741125
Oni Koroshi
Participant

I had already been considering being my own GC but decided to see the where other GC’s bids would come in at. After doing background checks and going over reviews of many of the large San Diego GC businesses, I had 4 companies come out to give me an estimate but only 1 actually came back with a detailed bid and another just gave a general estimate. I guess business is so good for these guys they don’t bother following through after they meet people.

If the big guys can’t even be bothered to follow through with a bid, I didn’t want to trust them with my house. Of the one bid I did get, for the rough plumbing alone, I’m saving just over $6k.

For the electrical which includes a 200 amp panel upgrade, several new dedicated circuits for major appliances, heated flooring, new GFCIs, rewiring the terrible existing wiring from the previous owner, etc. I’m saving over $10k.

I was very particular about my fixtures and appliances so I don’t think a GC would have saved me any money on that. Being able to shop around for tile and wood flooring, I’m sure I was able to actually save money buying it myself. Design and demo would have been several more thousand that I saved. Overall savings I would estimate around $35-40k, I’ve budgeted $90k doing it myself. The savings are not only from hiring my own subs directly but also doing a lot of the tasks myself such as flooring.

The major upside of being my own GC, I am able to get everything built exactly how I want. The GC’s I talked to wanted to build the showers with the hot mop method, something that seems to be pretty popular in California, but I wanted to build all my showers with Kerdi to ensure they will be water and moisture proof forever. Neither of them were familiar with this method which seemed strange.

This project is probably something I wouldn’t have done if this was my only residence since there is no way I could arrange all the work to be done as quickly as a pro would. If it was only a bathroom it wouldn’t be a problem but I don’t know if I could be without a working kitchen for that long if I was living in the house.