Builder D

Today we met with Builder D.   Builder D was the only General Contractor that we met at The Seattle Home Show that we thought would be a good fit for us.  We met them at their second office in Issaquah, WA.  This builder is based out of Enumclaw and builds in cities throughout King County.  The company was started by the grandfather of the current owner, and now his son has followed in his own footsteps and works for the company as well – four generations of custom home builders!  The current owner “dad” has been working for the family business since 1964.  Before meeting with them in person I did a lot of research on the company and they do a wide variety of work.  From small simple cabins to the highest end luxury custom homes.  Their quality of work in all their projects is evident in the photos that we were shown (and the ones we found online).

The company has about 10 employees, ranging from the owner/manger “dad”, the scheduler/supervisor “son” and a handful of framers and carpenters.  They sub out the other subs, but the framing and finish work they do in house.  One thing that is very important to us is the finish work, both in the woodwork and the tile work.  It’s reassuring to know that Builder D has staff members that can do great finish work (at least for the carpentry).  Speaking of finish work – Builder D was extremely knowledgeable because he has built a lot homes similar in style to ours.  Which we really appreciate and we think that it’s good to have that experience – that way our’s isn’t the first one that they’ve built.

Schedule

Builder D is pretty flexible with schedule and how he manages it.  He can come up with a full blown MS Project Schedule for us – but he typically finds that it’s overkill and clients don’t use it nor understand it.  His style is a bit more simple and low key.  They meet weekly with the client and give us a weekly update on what work was performed in the past week and what the next week look ahead will be.  In addition, they’ll itemize everything that they might be waiting on us for, and anything that is critical path.  That way we’re informed with what’s in front of us and not worry so much about the big picture schedule.  That said, if we want the full schedule we can have it.   After reviewing our plans, we asked him how long he thought it would take to build our house – just off the top of his head.  To our surprise he said 12 to 15 months!  15 months seems like a VERY long time to build the house.  I think with that long of a scheduled build, I’d definitely want to at least get a general idea of what the overall schedule was.

Contract & Cost

Builder D has a different set up than others that we’ve talked with.  Builder D sets up the project originally as a cost + percentage to come up with the overall cost for the job.  Up front, we get to see every one of the bids that comes in the door that we’re going to use.  Everything is an open book.  Then we can negotiate and change items/subcontractors if we need to.  Then we’ll work together with the builder to come up with the total cost for the contract.  Based on that, we’ll then have a fixed bid contract.  That’s the amount that we’ll get from the bank and the builder will need to get the project done for that amount.  That said – if we don’t have all of our finishes figured out, we’ll have allowances for those items.  If we go over the allowance, we’ll need to cover it with cash.  If we end up saving on some allowances, we can allocate that money towards a different item in the house, or have a less expensive house.  Our goal is to have everything picked out prior to bidding so we’ll be able to know what our items/finishes are and get an accurate bid up front.  Hopefully that will limit the allowances we have for the house and we’ll have a really good idea of what our house will cost before even swinging the first hammer.   Just based on what we discussed with Builder D, he said that he would give a really rough estimate of $150 – $200 per square foot to build our house.  Of course, that’s a wide swing in price and if we move further in the interview process with him, we’ll need to get a better estimate.

Deposit

Builder D doesn’t charge a deposit if we wanted to work with him.  He believes that his policy is not to charge anyone for anything until we’ve actually done the work.  I really like that philosophy.  If we need a lot of his help prior to construction starting (for example, permitting) then we’d just pay him an hourly rate.