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I know the Bear fence owner personally. He’s a Clairemont guy. Runs a solid business and has for many years.

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I’ll offer up an alternative opinion regarding the value of your time and “DIY” work.

The important thing to understand is that you don’t pay contractors in pre-tax dollars. You pay them in after-tax dollars.

Lets say your time is worth $75/hr pre-tax. That’s about $150K per year, which is pretty substantial – certainly enough to afford a home. It means you are paying, say 35%, in taxes so after tax, your time is worth about $50/hour after-tax.

Also, consider that when dealing with a licensed contractor who pays for all the benefits and insurance, a basic laborer costs about $40/hr. Plumbers charging me $80/hour for their time to do work on my project – that’s $123/hr pre-tax. Not a bad rate if you can DIY.

You have to adjust for the fact that you can’t work as fast as a professional, but you also have to adjust for the fact that you burn time watching and managing contractors as well. Also, these guys will bid by the job to hide the number of hours.

I just cancelled a plumber because the numbers didn’t add up. He bid a job for $7,500 then reduced it to $5900 after some negotiation. A couple days before he was going to start he said “we’ll be done by the end of the day.” Hmmmm. Three dudes. One day. That’s 24 hours. Subtract out $1500 for materials and I get $4400 divided by 24 hours – that’s $183/hour after-tax. I did the job myself. Was painful and it took me 45 hours instead of 24, but I still made $110 after-tax. Not bad.

Again the critical point is – you pay for contractors with after-tax dollars and you pay them for liability insurance, workers comp, benefits, etc that you don’t have to pay yourself. If you have skills, use them.

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I may be late w/ this. I used these guys for a stainless cable fence on a deck. I DIY-ed it. They have a glass option also.

https://agsstainless.com/

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Interesting data. Thing is, all the sub-contractors I am talking to are super-busy right now and some of the quotes I am getting for framers are incredibly high. Not sure how to reconcile that fact w/ the article.

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[quote=zk]
If you stopped watching the news 10 years ago, how can you say that you “can’t imagine how anyone can say that the right wing media (Fox) is any different from the left (all others).”?

If you’re going by election night, I think you’re missing the reality of what’s happening.[/quote]

I had a friend who was on the Fox bandwagon. I heard it all from him. I stopped listening to him also.

Also, I channel surf and stop on those stations now and again.

Some of the non-Fox channels were more biased to the liberal side than others. I wasn’t composing my piggington response at the time so I didn’t track each station and their tendencies. .

Your and Harvey’s responses are disturbing. Really you aren’t arguing, just calling me out as a liar because I said I don’t watch the news but have an opinion on the bias in the media. Kind of annoying.

You are just as blind to the bias of the stations that spew what you want to hear as the Fox watchers, methinks.

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While I agree the Fox propaganda machine is awful, I can’t imagine how anyone can say that the right wing media (Fox) is any different from the left (all others).

I stopped watching the news about 10 years ago. The only exception was the the presidential election this past November.

I was truly disgusted as I flipped between the gloating heads on Fox and the undeniably depressed talking heads on the other channels.

There wasn’t a single unbiased channel to be found that just reported the facts without biased commentary.

As one network was signing off, the whole coverage team made no attempt to hide the fact that they hated Trump and how bummed they were that he had won. It was disgusting – just as disgusting as Fox’s gloating.

One guy went so far as to say that the reason Trump won was because of a “whitelash” – that is white voters rebelling against a black president. Was he saying that all the white voters who voted for Obama suddenly turned racist and voted against a woman because the last President was black. Huh ? Stupidest thing I have ever heard anyone ever say on a news show.

Right and left wing media are not destroying this country. The fact that they exist is a sign that the country is being destroyed. The govt has control and influence in too many things. So much so that media has emerged to attempt to sway the gov in their direction. Take away that influence and the lobbyists and media would disappear.

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The liberals have cried “wolf” too much on Trump and have not picked their battles well at all.

Rather than pointing out specific policies that have resulted in specific problems, they just attack Trump personally.

When something concrete emerges, will they be able to take advantage of it ? I doubt it.

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No, of course I didn’t ACTUALLY look into it. That was just me being snarky.

I did look, very briefly, into using shipping containers for a pool house, though. It is doable, but the structural engineer said it won’t really save you money because if you cut them, you have to re-engineer everything.

Permitting in Clairemont shouldn’t be too bad. I would recommend doing what we did and submit a Preliminary Design Review to the city DURING escrow. This is a process by which you ask the city specific questions about building a loosely defined house on a specific property.

We checked up on all the overlays that apply to this particular property and any specific rules so you know, before you close escrow, what you are dealing with.

We learned, for example, that the property was not in the coastal commission overlay. If it had been, we would not have purchased it.

The prelim. design review cost about $4K but it paved the way for a little easier permitting, and let us know what to expect. We also requested exemptions that we were able to use when it came to permitting time.

In Clairemont, you will run into “steep hillside” overlyas, but you can get exemptions by pulling up old grading maps that show the slope is not natural.

I would say the permitting process is not so bad. Again – patience is the key and playing the “I’m just a homeowner” card goes a long way. Finding an architect that is both creative and knows how to negotiate the permitting process is probably the biggest challenge.

And budgeting the city fees is impossible.

Tell your girlfriend “In a year, you will wish you started today.” As much time and hassle as I have put into this house, I am so thrilled that I started it when I did.

We pulled a permit in 2 yrs in CV and we used an architect that was more commercial than residential for personal reasons. We could have done it in about 6 months w/ a residential architect.

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I tried that. Couldn’t get it permitted.

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and unions.

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Want to get rid of robots ?
Get rid of minimum wage.

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RE: Gardener Pools.

Thanks for the referral. Good news is they are family owned and in east county.

Bad news is they have a nice website and are partnered with Leslie pool supplies. Companies with partners like that are unlikely to work with me cuz they won’t want to come out and do just the pool surface. They will want to turn key it or they won’t do it.

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Thanks, Rich. I have been going back and forth over the concept of doing a blog on the house build. Just not sure I want the general public knowing where I live. I have lots to tell about the city, architects, inspectors, etc. Seriously, if anyone is looking to DIY a new house, I’m glad to help.

Unfortunately, contractors are pretty busy now and lumber skyrocketed in the last six months. I expect the next downturn will come as soon as I finish my house, after which builders will be begging for work.

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That is an interesting way to put it – that there are more people telling others not to do it than people saying to give it a shot. And likely the people saying “don’t do it” have never done it or tried it.

It definitely isn’t for everybody and it requires, above all things, patience.

Also, you have to be able to see things both from a very high level and at a very detailed level. If you are only comfortable with one of the two, you will drown one way or another.

Buying a property that has already been “developed” is also key. Because my property had a house on it when I bought it, I was able to rent it out while we worked on the permit, and it saved me about $66,000 in school fees and Mello Roos-type fees as well. Again – not a typo. $66,000. I think it also saves on utility infrastructure costs, as well. $4500 for water, probably $10K for electric, etc. ALso, we were able to finance the purchase as a normal mortgage instead of a land purchase.

Also critical is understanding that interest is a real, hard cost and along with “patience” comes the ability to afford to be patient.

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I should say – in return, I will gladly answer questions about the process of designing and building a house in San Diego. Been contemplating my own blog, actually.

One interesting thing I learned is that different people mean different things when they say “square foot”.

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[quote=spdrun]
The attorney can get a pre-negotiated fee for a closing.[/quote]

Well, ya. So can a gardener or an NFL linebacker, but they are not the right people for the job. Neither is an attorney.

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