I think it really depends on your town and their building requirements/restrictions, the degree of difficulty involved in the process of getting appropriate approvals, and your specific lot/property and any encumbrances it may have. If you live in one of those places like Texas or parts of Tennessee, where getting a building permit takes about five minutes and involves little more than standing in line at City Hall with some plans and getting a stamp, then by all means, go this route. But if you live somewhere where the process is long and involved, and requires variances, board of adjustment review and critique, historical commission approvals, board of health approvals, possible state environmental approvals, or extensive site-work, you definitely want to go local. Two years ago, we were going this same route with a non-local company (factory-built modular shell, site-finished house), and got really far along in the process before we realized the truth of what henry said above. Although the company built great houses, and even used local subs for sitework, overall it was a huge cluster, because they had no idea about how extensive the approval process is in our town. It can take 6 months to a year or more to get a building permit in my town. This company was totally clueless. Bottom line here is, the houses in my town that get built and get the fastest approvals are the ones that are presented to and defended before all the required Boards by the local architects, local engineers, and local GCs. We thought we were saving money by looking outside of our "zip-coded" zipcode, but in the end, we actually wasted a ton of money trying (and failing) to go the non-local route. Before you even ask the company how they handle it, you should find out or know more about how your town handles the building permitting process. Your answer will be there.

You definitely did not overreact. My one regret was not insisting our GC get another plumber when the plumber started disrespecting our property. One of the things we ended up doing was withholding payment for parts of the job until damages were fixed. It helped speed up the process of rectifying things and in the interim let us hold money to have the problem fixed if the GC didn't make it right to our satisfaction. BTW--our "biggie" was when the floor guys poured polyurethane in my brand new silgranit sink and left a poly soaked sheet sitting in the sink overnight. As if that weren't bad enough, they took sandpaper to the sink to try to remove the stain. The kitchen was already completed by the KD (granite and all) and it had been closed off from the rooms where the hardwood floors were going in, but they tore down the plastic sheets and went in anyway. Had the granite cracked when the sink was replaced it would have been a very expensive OOPS, but fortunately the sink was replaced without harming the granite. No---you are NOT overreacting. It's your house. Just make sure you hold the GC responsible for the actions of his/her subs and hold money until it's fixed to your satisfaction.

My advice, based on experience as a homeowner: When comparing bids, be sure you're comparing apples to apples. Looking back now, we chose our GC for other factors in addition to price, but he definitely low-balled his original bid to look more appealing. A common tactic, but one that's often not realized by consumers until after the fact. (We did go into this project knowing this, but I believe it's worth repeating here. Again.) Meangoose summed up my feelings precisely: "I think homeowners get kind of a raw deal in these discussions sometimes. If they watch the workers like a hawk, questioning the productivity and methodology of the workers, they're being unfair and unrealistic. When they get out of the way and assume that the GC has things under control (seeing that is what the additional 25% or whatever is supposed to be for) then they're not being active consumers." "I GC'd my own reno, mostly because of these types of discussions on GW. I just couldn't understand why I'd pay a GC a premium when I'd still have to manage everything anyways and educate myself on every task well enough to direct it if not do it myself." I work from home, and my GC doesn't realize how much money I SAVED (and I will emphasize again: SAVED) him by pointing out to his subs along the way when they were doing things wrong, like installing the wrong type of electrical switches, or stopping a caulking project because they were doing such a messy job on my brand new cabinets with 1/8 gaps in the trim, that I'd rather do it myself. I can give example after example... crooked backsplash, trim that didn't match... and so on. I checked on the work periodically throughout the day while the subs could fix legitimate errors on their parts while they were here--and the errors were fixable. Had I worked outside the house, and come home each evening to the errors that were made during the day, they would have been more costly to my GC to fix. Admittedly, I'm writing this with some bitterness, facing a 10% change order increase when we had written into our contract that all change orders needed to be in writing (and we had only received written notice of change orders for less than 5%). Not the end of the world, but this is my second experience with a GC, both were researched and recommended. And it's my last experience. I'm done being duped. I managed the day-to-day of this project, not my GC. I acknowledged and paid for each time I cost him more money; but I should have kept notes along the way of when I saved him money. So, my main piece of advice: If you work outside the home and cannot be there, in person, when work is being done in your home, you must thoroughly, completely trust your GC and each one of his/her subs. Or, you must be flexible and accept subpar work along the way because it is up in the air who pays for things to be done right. This post was edited by peony4 on Thu, Oct 3, 13 at 21:25

Our gc has given us credit when we supplied something he was going to buy or for labor we are not having him do. We also intended to have him do tile floors for us, but will go with Marmoleum instead and get a certified installer for that. He said he will credit us for not doing the floor install, but joked that would be $1 off. I am very interested in how much per square foot that will be and when we figure that out, I will post here. I can't wait to here how much it was for others and where they are located. I am in NY so labor here is not cheap. I am sure we will come to an agreement as he has been fair with us so far. Now, he did mention the bs labor was not in the contract, so whatever he takes off per sq ft for installing tile for the floor, we will add back for the bs. Would the labor charges for a floor be any different than a bs? Hmmmmm...