It's not unusual in my experience for the add-ons ONLY to appear after demo has started. Hope you've planned for up to 20% of your budget for the cost overruns that result from "surprises"!

Unfortunately that is the way of renovations. You start finding issues once you open up the walls and can see everything.

Well,

I guess you can be grateful that someone was on the ball! :>)

The fun's just starting!

Ouch. Sorry.

I got so darn frustrated with the whole "well, I don't know if that's load bearing and we won't know until we start demo" during the bidding process that I took a hammer to all the walls in question and bashed holes so the structure could be easily viewed :-)

Uncertainty is so frustrating during remodels. I feel for ya.

tech
sorry to hear day 1 is not going as well as you anticipated

"load-bearing wall, a return duct in the middle of what is supposed to be a doorway, and oops, the five-foot slider is actually more expensive than the six-footer, who knew?"

Without the full context it's somewhat difficult to determine if this is a simple there was really no way to know prior to opening walls or a inexperienced or lazy GC that didn't properly investigate as much as possible PRIOR to offering a bid

IF the "little jig" was showing/exposed prior to day 1 I would think there is a way to determine whether that is load bearing
Depending on construction of your home - ex in my home the basement tells most of the upstairs stories - so I could tell ducting/load bearing from basement ceiling along with what is visual 1st floor - sort of like a puzzle - well if the flooring is running this way then typically the joists would run the opposite (run to basement yep that's confirmed)

A return duct should have been figured prior to opening anything - assuming it exists in current situation one should make an effort to figure out where that is running

The 5' slider being more expensive to me should be a no brainer for an experienced GC if in fact that is true that would tell me a 6' is a standard size & 5' a special order

I would be upset and asking some ?'s to this GC - in a diplomatic way - but w/some speculation it seems to me he did not do his homework.

Good luck

Just wondering, how did your plan get through the permit process with this oversight?

New beam is in and the duct is moved. Yes, these issues could have been foreseen. There were easy workarounds, nothing like others have mentioned here. My GC is easy going in a fairly positive way. He paid to have his HVAC guy come move the vent. It was a return so an easy fix. He paid for the beam and we paid for the extra labor for the load-bearing wall. All in all, they have made significant progress in two days. Thanks for letting me rant a bit.

I guess I'm wondering about the permitting issue as well. Did they make it clear that load bearing walls would be moved or changed? That requires an engineering report...it's no biggie now...but way biggie when you go to sell it...

It was almost funny with our remodel. During our bid collection phase we had 2 (out of 5) tell us they knew by the house layout etc that the wall was absolutely positively 100% NOT load bearing. Others said they couldn't be sure till they had an engineer out. It ended up being load bearing.

The contractor we went with said that it was not too much more expensive for load bearing - the added costs were the engineer and the steel beam (said labor was about same). He didn't even charged us extra for the load bearing replace. During the bidding time I was having the contractors either write 2 bids or put into the contract that the bid was good even if the wall was load bearing.

Igloo you mention an engineering report when you sell.. we did not get the project permitted (all of the contractors we had out to bid said the scope of the project was not one that required permits). Our contractor did have an engineer out in order to spec out the steel beam etc for the load bearing but I did not receive an "engineering report". Should I be concerned?

The permit process is a local process. Our city wants to approve everything, except some basic things like painting, and all of these requirements are specified on the city web site. I have friends who live in other cities-- some very close by-- who've had a totally different permitting experience. You'll have to check with your city; if you live in an unincorporated area, you would talk to the county officials. Best of luck.

I'd definately check on it mystery...in our municipality they're demons on stuff like this. But as (oh dear I just looked at the name...overlyoptimistic says heh heh) it might be a local button and not a problem for you. If you can find on their website that you did need the engineering report etc., I'd quietly get that information now and keep it in my back pocket just in case it ever comes up.

Well I live in a weird bermuda triangle between 3 cities and am officially in none. Don't think I live in the country though - its just some weird thing where 3 different suburbs meet. So, I have much less restrictions, all the contractors LOVED it when they found out I was in this area. The flip side is that if I did want permits they'd have to go to the county office which is a LONG way away.

Thankfully I plan on living here a long time so I am not so concerned about the resale :)