By not specifying the plumbing fixtures before the contract is signed you lose the ability to control their cost through competitive bidding and may therefore be exposed to multiple unknown markups and no accurate knowledge of the sub's price from the supplier since unrevealed discounts and delayed kickbacks are possible and sometime routine. This is illegal if the contract is written properly but I've never seen that in a contractor written contract. If you list your fixtures in the contract as allowances, they become little Cost of the Work contracts inside the main contract but there is rarely a procedure for controlling the costs. The plumber should be required to show a receipt from his supplier and include any discounts or kickbacks and add a predetermined markup (if any). The GC should be required to show you that paperwork with his fee added. Don't expect that to be the same price as a retail store. Allowances are handled very fairly in commercial work but not in home building. Since the contractors are used to add their profit to their cost it can be difficult to get them to embrace a cost plus approach. My contractors all allow owners to pay Ferguson directly with no markup since their labor, overhead & profit is already in the base contract.

My GC destroyed our house, so he was fired before his drywall subs could even start. He had his own employees - THEY were the IDIOTS who detroyed the framing, roofing and siding. He told us on day one that the actual electrician would run the wiring - WRONG! His morons did it and then I had to learn all about electric and fix it! We had to then hire our own electrician. Well, next time we are going with the higher bid from the company we know is reliable. The guy we hired was nice (at first)- and his bid was about $5,000 to map out the wiring the morons did, inspect it, have the electric inspector approve it and then hook it up and get final inspection. The highest bid for all new wiring was around $7,500. Well, that turned into "Oh, you wanted THAT?" YES! Do you not comprehend English? And on and on. In the end it cost us over $8,000 just for the electric, and I actually did the re-wiring (the original MORONS NAILED through the wires!) Then, AFTER the final inspection, the electrician came back because some breakers were recalled. When the guy was there he looked and said "Oh look, your breaker box (in the basement) has rust - it looks like water is getting in along the main line from the outside. You need a NEW breaker box and breakers. I'll get back to you with a quote." He wanted over $2,300. So, it just so happened that an electrician just purchased the old building my mother used to work in, and she stopped by to see how they liked it. She explained the situation, the guy came out and said "You do NOT need a new box. There is only a little rust. I'll clean it all up, replace any corroded breakers, clean and re-seal the main cable on the outside for $700. If you want a new box for added capacity you can do it later." DEAL! In and out in a few hours, two very nice guys. Not like the other electricians who thought they were God's Gift! We had to hire someone to rip down and replace all the cedar shakes. The original MORONS installed it with no double-course on the bottom and GAPS showing Tyvek behind the shakes. We found a local high-end GC who does almost all cedar. Yes, the bid included a few hundred extra dollars per day for the GC's "time" (he didn't do any work), but his cedar subs were true artists who usually do high-end work on the water. What a DREAM! They were very nice, one guy LOVED that my house has the old ship-lap plank sheathing, they replaced the Tyvek with tar paper (NEVER use Tyvek behind REAL wood siding), installed all the new (properly sized special order 24" tall) shakes in 3-4 days. They even left us the $2,000 worth of 18"h shakes that were ripped down to use as kindling in our wood stove. Normally they take them because they all heat with wood too ;) The GC even offered to give me cedar scraps in the future if we ever need them (that won't be for a few years though ;) -- Dianalo, just before the new electricans arrived (the rip-off guys), the ONE available outlet in our kitchen died. So yes, they replaced it the day they mapped the wiring. It cost a few HUNDRED dollars for that ONE outlet with new line to the box (a short, clean run). Had we just called in a local electrician for an hour it would have cost maybe $100 for an hour's work. I do not understand how your GC added an upcharge to items that YOU purchased?!?! Even my original GC told us "Buy your own light fixtures - make sure they are here by this date." The electricians charged $300 for each ceiling fan install, and $100 for each recessed light. If I had realized how BAD recessed lights with CFLs would light the rooms I could have saved $1,400 and put that towards the expensive sconces and pendants that match my triple-pendant and gotten 10x the amount of light in the room. Oh yeah, they wanted to charge $10 for each CFL lightbulb! We bought our own - this made them REALLY MAD! They claimed that customers NEVER buy their own bulbs! What? That is INSANE! -- Oh yeah, we hired our own drywallers. The GC was charging a few thousand. The bid was only $700 for labor - we already purchased the drywall because my brother's friend was going to do it (but he screwed up the insulation and I had to fix it, so that idea went down the drain). $700 sounds cheap, but it took only 1-1/2 full days, the other days they came between other jobs. I think it looks like crap, but I did some research (when deciding on paint sheen for the ceiling) and it turns out modern crappy drywall / spackling is NORMAL! I am SO glad I live in an old house with 1" thick plaster walls with smooth-as-butter like a baby's bottom finish. I had to fix a cracked ceiling (WORST experience - threw out my back for 2 weeks), but once I hit the original plaster under the gazillions of layers of paint I couldn't BELIEVE how SMOOTH and PERFECT it was. And someone did it all by hand! Oh yeah, people think that new construction has crown moulding as an "added value." That's BONK! It's because the framing and drywalling is so bad! You NEED crown moulding to hide the wavy line between the wall and ceiling. I haven't done mine yet because the cost of lumber has skyrocketed and the wood just to make the trim around my patio doors cost over $200. All I can say is Thank God I already do my own custom trim - there are SO MANY screw-ups that need to be hidden. The original MORONS cut the first plank of wood flooring between the dining room and the new kitchen. I looked at it and SCREAMED "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!?!" They said "Aren't you going to replace that old floor?" WHAT?!?! I said "Are you CRAZY? That is ANTIQUE FIR! WHY would I rip that out and replace it?!" Cutting the flooring and installing a wide decorative strip between the two rooms is the job I am dreading most. That is the one thing I truly fear I can screw up, but I don't trust anyone else after all I've been through. Having to engineer and build new beams and collar ties and figuring out 3 different mitres and bevels to shore-up the roof so the original front roof doesn't collapse is nothing compared to facing that floor!

Please choose another brand. You will be paying a lot, and not getting good bang for the buck. I've had Pella windows, and detest them. I've been changing them out a few at a time. If you want wood, look at Marvin or Kolbe as alternatives. Marvin is very expensive, but check out their Integrity Wood-Ultrex line which has the beauty of wood interiors with the low maintenance of fiberglass exteriors, and a lower price point than Marvin Ultimates wood-clad.

Thanks for your questions Sammy. Glad you have some experience in this arena. I like to support craftspeople in the USA, protect forests, and I have reactions to adhesives and off-gassing after going through chemo, so try to avoid composite or engineered. All of the rest of our furniture is antique and solid wood and I just like the heft and feel. The window corner is problematic as you noted, and there is a heat register in the corner behind the spindle chair near the window. The wall is 130" long. I'm thinking of having made three pieces that will be pushed together and centered on the wall totaling 106", leaving 12" on either side. It won't have a built in look necessarily but I think I am ok with that. It would also enable us to reuse the bookcases in different locations when we move into a condo in NYC sometime in the next 8 years. I saw this pic as inspiration for three separate units pushed together. This one is a total of 108". (It is way too ornate for my tastes.) Our floors are crooked - 165 year old house. So I'm concerned that with three together they will look wonky or uneven. What are your thoughts? Any other ideas on how to deal with the window corner?