I think it is not too early to involve a builder. The reason is that while you may love your architect, and he may do wonderful work, you won't be able to determine building costs or do cost trade off's unless you have a builder who can tell you what the costs will be. We started by finding a builder first who had an architect that he works with. This buillder also allows customers to bring in their own architect - but often times must go back to his guy to fix things to make the house buildable within the budget. Here are some suggestions on how to pick a builder: - talk to people that have used the builder before, but are not referred to by the builder (he will always provide his best references). Don't just ask if he/she builds a good house - find out how they did on budget and schedule. Were the allowances reasonable, how much more did the house cost than originally planned, was the builder responsive to your requests, was he accessable. - talk to mortgage bankers. Believe me - they know who is good and who isn't. You need to make sure the builder is financially stable, and has a long track record of successful projects. - talk to each build - multiple times. Go visit houses they are building, ask them a lot of questions (even if you already know the answers). Find one that you can trust and communicate with . The architect is important - but the builder is the most important person in your project. The sooner you get them involved, the better the chance of success.

Believe me, I have pondered my expectations myself! But no, I don't think I'm being unrealistic at all; I think I've just been talking to the wrong kind of builders for the project. The urban area I live in right now is full of great builders - but they specialize in houses for the suburbs. There are many fantastic golf course developments around this area, including a couple of PGA championship courses. Those are the "hot" places to live around here because they have easy access to the freeway system and to the downtown area. So naturally, most of the builders in this area gear their businesses to what's hot and trendy. I live in one of the "hot and trendy" areas right now and want to move about 30 miles away, to a rural area. The whole county is rural and agricultural in nature. There are basically two kinds of builders who build there - those who build huge estate homes for gentleman farmers and those who build very basic starter kinds of homes for those with limited resources. I don't have limited resources, but I do have specific wants in this house and I do admit I expect a higher level of craftsmanship and amenities than some of these builders are used to providing in starter homes. What I need is someone who builds somewhere in the middle. But you make some very good points. There are certain things which are a deal breaker for me and I need to pin-point those and not worry so much about the smaller stuff. Being a professional woman myself, I'm just not used to a more informal way of doing business as many of these builders are. But I thought I'd found "the one" and thought he'd do a great job for me, but neither I nor my attorney could live with the loose contract he uses that gives him all the protection and affords me very little for my investment. When he wouldn't even sit down and listen to the concerns and try to negotiate something that we both could live with in a compromise, I knew I had to start all over again. After all, I am the consumer here and it's my money that's at risk if I'm stupid enough to give up all my rights by signing something I'm not comfortable with. There has to be trust on both sides and if there isn't, then it's time to walk away. Thanks for your advice.

I guess I qualify as an OB now although I didn't start out that way. We wound up firing our contractor halfway through the job due to his massive incompetence and dishonesty. It then took us several months to convince our bank to let us finish the job ourselves rather than risking getting involved with another crooked builder. Being a general contractor is far more about project management than it is about construction. The GC lines up sub-contractors, makes sure they show up and do the work they're supposed to, handles paperwork, and makes sure everybody gets paid when they're suppoesed to be paid. Many GCs probably couldn't hammer a nail in straight if they had to. To be a GC you need business skills and project management skills, and you need to know (or be willing to find out) what a construction job should look like when it is finished. It helps in dealing with subs to learn the lingo but you don't have to be able to hammer, saw, hang sheetrock, run electrical lines, or anything else. If you OB, plan to spend at least 20 hours per week and possibly more than that on the job. I just WISH we had just gone the owner-builder route right from the start. Neither DH nor I have any construction experience whatsoever but we had looked into being our own general contractors before we hired our builder. We even took a class on building your own home but then decided that we just didn't have the necessary time to devote to the task. Was that a mistake! I had done my homework and had spent a huge amount of time on this board before we ever broke ground - so I had a good idea of what to look for in quality work. It quickly became evident that my builder didn't have a clue and apparently he couldn't have cared less. His subs were obviously the cheapest he could find and often, I suspect, were undocumented day laborers. They didn't follow installation specifications for installed materials like Tyvek sheathing, my Jeld-wen windows, or the roofing shingles. I know because when things didn't look right to me, I got the specs from the manufacturers and checked their work myself. They also often didn't follow building codes - which I found out because I had put it in my contract that I would separately hire a third-party inspector to inspect all stages and that any work not meeting code would have to be redone at the builder's expense. The framer hired by my builder used I-beam trusses between the first and second floors instead of the open-web trusses I had specified. The framing was completed while I was out of town for two weeks and by the time I got back, the house was already sheathed and the roofer had started work. So it was too late (eg., economically unfeasible) to make the builder have the entire roof and second floor taken down so that the right trusses could be put in. My plans called for the HVAC units and all ductwork to be within the heated/cooled envelope of the house. When I demanded that my builder check with his engineer to ensure that holes could be cut through the i-beams large enough to accomodate the HVAC ducts, he assured me that would be "no problem." That was a lie. Even the holes that had to be cut through the i-beam trusses for plumbing drain lines weakened them enough that my third-party inspector insisted that extra trusses be installed to bear part of the load. No doubt putting those in was a major expense that the builder had to eat. There was no way HVAC ductwork could be run between the floors as designed. Instead, the HVAC units were put in the unairconditioned attic along with massive amounts of flexible ductwork. Instead of an attic that could someday be finished out to add a couple more bedrooms, I have two big HVAC units and what looks like a massive silver spiderweb totally filling the attic space. I also lost closet space in all my bedroom closets because ductwork chases down to the first floor had to be put somewhere. When I exploded about the lost usable square footage and the additional on-going costs associated with having the HVAC and ductwork up in the attic (we live in central Texas!) my builder tried to tell me that EVEN IF the framer had used open-web trusses, the ductwork still would not have been able to be run through the trusses and that "everybody puts HVAC units in the attic." DUH? Open web trusses are designed to allow ductwork and plumbing to be run them!! Had the man NEVER read anything about energy efficient building practices? Nope. He just trusted that his framer - who hardly spoke English - knew what he was doing. Despite all this, my builder kept telling me that he was a "professional" and that I should just relax and let him do his job. HAH! I can't think of a single task that ever he actually handled completely correctly from start to finish. Then, shortly after the HVAC units were installed, I got hit with a $54,000 lien because builder had not paid for my windows and patio doors even though he had been given draw money specifically for that purpose! That lien was immediately followed up by threats of two smaller liens from two other subcontractors (the portapotty provider and the exterior paint contractor)! And the builder admitted he didn't have the money to pay any of the three. At that point I was more than ready to fire him but my bank insisted that I could NOT do so. We paid off the liens and the unpaid subcontractors and I took over handling ALL monies and paying the subcontractors and suppliers directly instead of having draws go to the builder to pay them. No more money was going to flow into the builder's hands until my house was completed, at which point anything that was still left of the original contract price would be his "profit." By that point, the only thing the builder was doing was hiring subs and ordering materials. I was paying a third party inspector separately to check all work that I didn't feel competant to inspect myself. I was handling all the paperwork and making sure everybody got paid. But then the kicker... I discovered that builder was having materials delivered to my build - which I was paying for - and then having his subs (whom I was also paying!) move them to a spec house that he was building and install them there. I had had enough. I fired him. After taking over as GC, I had to spend as much time/effort on UNDOING some of the mistakes he made as on moving forward to finish the build. And the money he wasted/stole from us has forced us to cut back on the level of finishes that we had originally planned to have. My advice: Go take a course on building your own home. Spend time reading and learning everything you can about the building process. Learn the language. If you are reasonably intelligent and willing to devote the time, you CAN build your own home. Plus, there are businesses (Owner-Builder Network and UBuildIt.com are two that I know about although I've not used either one) that will help you by providing you with pre-vetted lists of sub-contractors and guiding you step by step through the process. If your state or your bank requires you to have a licensed builder, these organizations will be the builder-of-record for you. Of course they charge a fee for their services. I don't know how much but it is significantly less than a builder's profit margin. You can also hire a third-party inspector to make sure that you're getting everything built to code. Just make sure that all your subcontractors know that they don't get paid until your third party inspector signs off that the work is up to code. I designed my plan myself and I would love to see the house built as designed. The house we are in the process of finishing will eventually be "okay" but it will never be the house I dreamed of. So there is some chance that when we get this house built we will sell it and rebuild the same design in a new location. But next time I will definitely OB from the get go.

Are you near earthquake zones or fire or flood area? Are you builing where there is electric and water? Are you getting lien releases? Are you buying the materials yourself, or are you paying the subs? Do you know if they have paid them? Also in that area, there are many hispanics so you will need to know that they are not illegal.