12.17.2008

The Decision: General Contractor

The final decision on who your general contractor will be is a big one. Like a lot of things in life, you have to do a lot of research and then go with your gut decision. Often it will probably be a combination of stellar recommendations, a lack of complaints reported to the state, a start/finish schedule which seems reasonable and meshes with your desires, and a good feeling when you met him/her. When we were choosing our contractor, I was divided between the final two until we met each at a final meeting and then it was clear to both of us, as well as our architect, who should be at any final meetings.

Once you choose your contractor, you will probably meet again to go over some final specs and sign your contractor. This meeting took an hour or so and he made some suggestions that may save us some money. He then worked through final questions with our architect (mostly without us but we were informed of any changes which affected our plans), and then submitted our plans for permits with Arlington County about a week ago. We expect the permit process to take about 3-4 weeks. Hopefully we'll be ready to break ground by the first week of January. Fortunately the down economy and the holidays may work in our favor and we'll hopefully be ready to go in early January.