Finish Your Home Before It Finishes You

By Dana V. Beck

Are you ready to build or remodel your home but feel overwhelmed by the task ahead? Imaging your finished product is one thing; reducing it down to paper and assembling the parts and people to make it a reality is an experience very few are prepared to handle. In short, it's not your job to know everything about construction, but it is your responsibility to hire those that do and manage them effectively.

This book is a no-nonsense, easy-to-follow, must-know, quick reference guide that takes you through all the critical building phases so you can maintain control of your money and sanity. Apply just a few of the 90 highlighted tips and your job as an overseer will be lightened considerably; follow most of them and you'll thrive, not just survive your building experience, and avoid the pitfalls and costly consequences all too common in this industry.

As a high-end builder and 35-year veteran of many hard won construction battles, I left the field after 20 years and entered law school with the intent of practicing construction defect law. Between semesters, while still full of lawyerly indignation, I decided to apply my new-found briefing skills to my own building experiences. The result was this book -- a real-world analysis of the issues at each building phase, from concept to completion, and the proven strategies necessary to handle them.

Subsequently, I re-entered the field for another 15-year stint, but this time armed with this manual. It has remained a work-in-progress ever since, as I've refined and honed my problem-solving techniques. Ultimately, this guide serves as a concise yet comprehensive crash course, giving homeowners a needed leg up on this long learning curve.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dana V. Beck
• Release date: Jun 2, 2011
• ISBN: 9781452490359

Dana V. Beck

Hello all. I'm a seasoned builder with three and a half decades of hands-on building experience in northern California, just north of SF. Most of my projects are high-end, hillside homes, including a 4-story home in Sausalito with 270 degree views of SF and the bay.As a minimalist, my approach to construction is to keep it simple - cut through the clutter and chaos and hire those that can do the job at a fair price. This includes realtors, architects, contractors and subs. After 20 years in the field,I wrote this book between semesters at law school. Then, I had the opportunity to hone in on the building issues and strategies that could make or break a build, or remodeling project. Let me know if this helped you or if I can answer questions directly.

Book preview

Finish Your Home Before It Finishes You

Inside Tips to Help Save Your

Money & Marriage

By Dana V. Beck

Finish Your Home Before It Finishes You

Inside Tips to Help Save Your

Money & Marriage

Published by Dana V. Beck

Cover image courtesy of Alfonsodetomas & Dreamstime.com

Cover by Joleene Naylor

Copyright 2011 Dana V. Beck

Smashwords Edition

Table of Contents

Introduction

Construction Today – Definitely Not Your Father’s House

Where to Start? With a Realistic Budget

Considerations When Choosing a Lot

Selecting an Architect

Finalizing Design Decisions

Getting Through the Approval Process

Construction Financing Fundamentals

Toad or Prince: Finding the Right Contractor

The Building Department’s Role – Compliance not Control

The Bidding Process – Comparing Apples & Lemons

Contract Essentials – Overlooked Requirements

Matching the Contractor with Your Project

Other Contractor Options: What are Your Choices?

Working with Subcontractors

Dialing for Dollars & Other Common Mistakes

Scheduling – If It’s Not on Time, It Can’t be on Budget

Making Changes & Minimizing Their Cost

Making Payments – Getting Your Money’s Worth

On Time and On Budget – How a Homeowner Can Contribute

Remodel Guidelines – Considerations Before the Dust Flies

Surviving Remodel – Staying in Control

Handling Conflicts

When Your Home is Finished: Common Oversights

Ideal Scenario – A Review

Conclusion

APPENDIX 1: A Chronological Overview of the Building Process

FINISH YOUR HOME BEFORE IT FINISHES YOU

Inside Tips to Help Save Your Money & Marriage

Introduction

As a high-end builder in residential construction, I am continually amazed by how simple home improvement must appear to the layman. I watch television with a dropped jaw when in only a half hour's span a house is gutted, new walls are added with new windows, and a finished space appears at the show's end, ready for dinner guests. Unlike the real world, nobody is scratching their head and looking quizzically at the plans pointing fingers at each other and making threatening phone calls to uncooperative suppliers and subcontractors. Instead, the motivated workers show up and go about their business with a precise plan of attack.

Similarly, I look at the displays set up in the large home improvement centers that feature a finished kitchen, complete with cabinets, counter tops, sinks and fixtures. In one visit with their in-store decorator you can create your new and improved virtual kitchen with a few simple keystrokes. It seems that all you need is a truck big enough to pick up these instant kitchens and a few of those workers on T.V. to plug it right into your chosen location. I wish it were that easy.

The reality, unfortunately, is a far more complex picture, but one that you can understand with a little help. This book takes you through the building process, from conception to completion, giving you insight into what to expect before and during construction. You will be warned of the common pitfalls to avoid, as well as learn the professional methods that allow you to effectively work with your assembled team of professionals and workmen. This book is not a technical manual full of construction terms and techniques, but a resource guide for those homeowners wanting to make informed decisions, of which you'll need to make hundreds.

It's not your role to know everything about construction, but it will be your job to hire those who do. However, you can only delegate so much responsibility, whether it's to your architect or general contractor. Ultimately it's your time, money and peace of mind that's at stake with something as personal as your own home. Like a pilot reviewing a checklist before takeoff, you must understand and follow the essential planning steps to ensure a successful endeavor. With help from this book, you will learn what to look for at each critical stage, what questions to ask, and what demands you should make to control the outcome of your project. If you pick out only one idea from this book, your job as the overseer will be lightened; follow most of the tips and you will have the advantage and satisfaction of knowing the inside game as it is played out between professional builders, without suffering the dire consequences so common in this industry.

Construction Today - Definitely Not Your Father's House

Homes today are more complex than those of only a decade ago, but the wood used to build them and the labor used to erect them are of a lower caliber. In generations past, wood milled from first growth forests was used for framing and finish materials. Without a doubt, these trees produced the finest lumber, unsurpassed by anything now available. Today's new growth trees are harvested sooner and are less dense than their predecessors. The result is a milled product that is structurally weaker (wider grain and more knots) and not as dimensionally stable as products in the past. What this means is that as the wood dries out, it tends to warp and twist with somewhat unpredictable results. Alternative engineered wood products have come into the market in response to the problems caused by such commodity lumber and to meet stringent engineering requirements, but these substitutes are even higher priced and are gradually receiving widespread acceptance (engineered wood includes those products that are laminated, pressed or finger-jointed to make dimensional lumber).

Given the nature of today's materials, careful screening is more important than ever. Each board has to be evaluated for adverse tendencies as slight defects become worse over time. Unfortunately, these problems tend to show up after a home is closed-in and heated. The homeowner eventually begins to notice uneven walls and ceilings, calling the builder back for difficult repairs. I've watched a homeowner spend a solid year trying to correct the mess left by careless framers on his two year old home (I know, I started and finished a four-story house next door at the same time). To straighten out wavy walls, crews of drywall tapers and painters applied numerous coats of texturing mud to even out the irregularities, while the homeowner's furniture remained under cover, stored in the middle of each room. Though his standards were exceptionally high with a resolve to match, he had to endure months of aggravation because his contractor ignored the most basic quality control procedures.

Tip: Don't confuse speed with efficiency. Grabbing the top board off the lumber pile makes for fast work but not quality construction. Good framers sort though their lumber for best use and waste little wood, saving you money on lumber and preventing costly callbacks in the end.

Home designs today are steadily evolving, but the labor to build them has not kept pace. A generation ago, an entry level worker was trained through apprenticeship programs where he would spend years learning his trade under a watchful journeyman. A carpenter, for example, was expected to know how to layout and form a foundation, frame floors and walls, as well as cut and assemble rafters and stairs. In today's age of specialization and severe cost cutting practices, it is rare to find an individual capable of executing all of these basic aspects competently. Instead, the foreman lays out the work and the carpenters merely assemble the pieces in a mechanical, rapid fire fashion with nail guns.

Tip: There’s a reason the common hammer still exists; driving a nail with a hammer properly sets the nail and takes up any gap between boards. Nail guns, however, tend to leave gaps which grow as the wood dries and shrinks, adding to the settling noises you hear down the road.

In short, speed is more valued than accuracy, and few contractors take the time to check their work, relying on you to discover the error of their ways. Here, the mind set is that the finished product only has to look good for a year, the arbitrary time frame a homeowner has to expect corrections to occur. If homes were meant to stand for only ten years and took only five years to pay off, these factors wouldn't be an issue. But given this current scenario, careful screening and management of both labor and materials are more important than ever.

Where to Start? With a Realistic Budget

A project's scope is most often determined by the budget. Unfortunately, with lots of dollars involved, an owner's reasoning process can get skewed, and planning steps are missed or ignored in an attempt to make the numbers work on paper. Your budget, however, is made or broken in this preconstruction phase, so you must analyze your project with utmost care or pay the consequences later.

Tip: Weak assessments lead to an unrealistic budget - one which reflects desires more than reality.

Establishing a budget begins with cost breakdowns. With new construction, costs are more easily estimated and controlled than with remodel work. Once the foundation is in, the boundaries are physically set; and the work progresses to build up and fill in. Unfortunately, with remodel work, the scope tends to grow as upgrading and updating require that more areas of the house be improved or existing deficiencies resolved. For example, adding a new master suite with a bathroom puts an additional load on every system in the home (plumbing, heating and electrical) and will require nearly as many subcontractors as if you were building a new house. Some of these systems can merely be extended, while others may need total replacement or upgrading depending on the age and condition of the existing house.

Tip: To determine how long a remodel project should take, builders commonly estimate the time frame needed