when you say not planning to start for a year - do you mean break ground in 12 months? is this a custom home? if so - then now would be a good time to start working with a builder. It takes time to get your plans drawn and finalized, permits, site prep and other things done to get ready - and this is something you don't want to rush or feel pressure to make decisions before you are ready. We started looking for our builder 12 months before we figured we would be ready to start - and by start - I mean sold our existing home and moved into a rental, had our finances in order, and were ready to sign a contract to start the project. It did not take us long to find the builder - about a month - but we got lucky. Our builder did not advertise and we found him through an architect that we interviewed but did not select. Picking the right builder and verifying their credentials is the most important decision you will make in the process - leave plenty of time to do your research and pick the right builder. We already had a piece of land that was perked for spetic and had a well drilled. So when we started looking for the builder, we had a lot of things in place already. We also had picked a floor plan on-line that we liked and had been studying for months before we looked for the builder. When we met each prospective builder, we showed them the plans. Some gave is ball park estimates based on cost per square foot and the one we picked actually developed a written preliminary estimate. The estimate was a rough cost for that plan with mods that he believed needed to me made to the structure to make it fall within that cost. Once we determined that the house we wanted was within our reach, we enetered into a drafting services agreement with the builder. This agreement was to develop the detailed house plans using an architect that he had worked with in the past. The deal was that if we decided to build the house - then the cost we paid for the drafting services woild be applied to the house. It took about 6 months from the time we met the builder to the time that we had a good set of plans (not the final plans - but good enough to get detailed costing). It then took another 6 months to get our grading/site plan drafted and approved by the county, the final plans done, our detailed cost analysis which included picking out allownace items to get good basis of estimates, permits for the project, and the loan approved. It was a total of just over 12 months from the time we first met our builder to the day we signed the contract. This is a time consuming process. If you want to start in 12 months - I recommend that you start working with a builder as soon as you can. You can work with an architect in parallel if you need one - but I recommend working with you r builder because you need to know the costs - so that you can work you budgets and make cost trade-offs. The second biggest decision you will make after picking the right builder is making sure that your budget and schedule is sound and that you have adequate margin in the budget and schedule for oopses, which will occur. You should verify that all of the allowance costs that the builder gives you will allow you to purchase items that will meet your expectations. This can take a lot of time - you will want to visit his vendors - make some prelimianry selections - and get quotes (maybe talk to some of your own vendors too) - just to make sure these budget wedges are sufficient and that you are getting the quality you want and a reasonable deal. Best of luck

I knew of one guy who had done work before for me. He was not interested in the job. I did not know anyone who had used a GC before, so I started looking at cabinets at cab shops (have their own crews), big box stores, and hardware/lumberyard stores. I was at a lumberyard that sold Merillat Cabinets and they really were cheaply made cabs with those drawers with short little sides on them. I have a problem with blatant honesty. Can't help but say what comes to mind. So I said something about why do real estate ads put "Merillat Cabinets" as a bragging point? The salesman explained about the different grades of their cabinetry and we got into a conversation. I asked him if he had anybody he could recommend for installing cabinets and remodeling and he showed me pictures of a beautiful deck he had made by one carpenter. He said the guy did general carpentry and remodeling. When I met with him, Jim showed me his book of photos and gave me some phone numbers of customers to call. He also had his GC license displayed in the book, along with insurance certificates. Best of all, he was INTERESTED in my job. He asked questions, got out his measuring tape and checked to see if what I was thinking was possible to do. He made suggestions to do it better or easier than I had been thinking of. We meshed and it was clear we would make a good working team. Guy #2 I got in a similar way, he was someone who one of the cabinet sellers sometimes used to install. He came out to look, showed little interest, and never gave a bid on the work. Guy #3 was from another recommendation from a lumber yard. He came out and listened to my ideas without getting very engaged, gave me a bid on doing the work and talked about how to cut back to save money. He did not understand from my conversation with him that I was after a good-looking area first, within a reasonable cost, but that I was willing to pay what was needed to get what I wanted. It was a complicated job. The kitchen was like a 16 ft long galley kitchen. A room off of the back half of the kitchen used to be a porch and was now sort of a sun room. There were only three steps for the 31" drop down from the kitchen, and that was what got us needing the remodel. But adding more steps took away floorspace in the 10 x 10 room, making it unusable as a dining room. (Because of stupid remodeling done to the other end of the kitchen before I bought the house, this stairway was the only entrance to the kitchen and basement for any large items like new fridges and furnaces, so the staircase could not be less than about three and a half feet to four feet wide.) The back door being smack dab in the center of the wall opposite the kitchen did not help. Because of the shed-style roof and the placement of the other back door, we could not move that back door left or right along that wall, either! We had dogs going in and out of that room, so a dining set was an impediment to herd movement! On top of that, our small back yard had a black walnut tree. Tree + 3 dogs + squirrels taunting dogs = mud. We needed a paw-washing station at the back door. We had tried damp towels, buckets of water, a coiled hose that attached to the kitchen sink and stretched to the back door and we could use to spray muddy feet in a basin. Nothing worked. You should have seen what happened when you lost your grip on that coiled hose when the spray was on and it slammed its way back against the kitchen cabinets! Jim was the only one who was enthusiastic about my assertion that the plumbing in the basement was not that far away and could possibly be used. He was willing to figure out if we had enough slope for a return plumbing run for waste water. He was willing to go into the auxiliary basement under the back half of the kitchen and insulate it properly, then do the plumbing to get the water and waste pipes to the old back porch. He was a real joy to work with. Jim took the drawings the cabinet guy and I had made and planned out the kitchen remodel. He faced each new challenge with a few choice words, a swipe at his brow, and a, "Nancy, can you come here, I need to show you something," followed by options for remediation and cost estimates (no support post on the right side of the "header" a previous owner had made going between kitchen and old back porch, three live electrical wires found with wirenuts on them left hanging in the walls, moldy drywall and rotted out rafters in that shed roof...) Pretty soon, Jim was checking EVERYTHING before closing up a wall, given that doodlehead's idiocy. I am sure Jim saved us a lot of trouble and heartache, if not our lives. He has done every job on both of my houses ever since, too.

ladycfp, I'm too much of a realist to think that way, but you may be right! muscat, the second guy is the son of a friend of mine. The father isn't in the contracting business but both father and son are intelligent, exacting men who make sure whatever they do is done correctly as it has their "signature" on it. I've seen the son's work several times and it's not just good, it's excellent. He tends to do higher end homes so I never considered him to begin with. If I'd known about him and his price from the beginning I would've gone with him. All that being said, I think we'll stick with the original guys. I'll call again tomorrow and clarify that we're definitely on in 9 days. Any hesitation on their part and we'll switch to the other fellow.

Many thanks to all of you who shared your experience. You surely made me feel better since it confirmed finding a good GC is not an easy task. It definitely is a supply and demand issue. The ones we asked to meet have good records, they are busy. In this town maybe there is one other reason that is house-flippers are back to picture, contractors are busy with those cheaply made, fast turnaround projects. Business has been slow for contractors for a few years, I suspect now they try to grab as many businesses as they could, but can not handle workload on hand, yet may not be sophisticate enough to predict future openings on their schedule. It may be the reasons they do not turn us down, they want to string us along. What I gathered from your experiences is that we need to be more active in getting recommendations and go to Home Shows. Some of you said you received recommendation from KDs. How did you find your KD? It was not easy for us to find a KD either. We met them in cabinet dealers' shop, most were eager to sell cabinets instead of designing a workable plan. We checked three of them with good looking past project portfolio, all of them had very bad rating on Angie's list. We later found out one of the three are out of business, another one has changed business name and store location. We are talking with one now who could never keep an appointment, and is very slow to respond emails and phone messages if at all. I sincerely hope I could find one as good as the KDs on this forum. The Appliance store suggested us to get hold of contractors affiliated with NARI (National Association of the Remodeling Industry), has any one tried this route? Please keep your experience and suggestions coming in, they are incredibly helpful, to me and I believe would be for other fellow posters. Thank you again.