oh michoumonster, I have been in your shoes so this is experience talking... 1) Review your contract with your attorney to make SURE you follow whatever requirements it has for termination. 2) Also have your attorney review every single you or your builder has ever signed that is related to the house or the land it sits on...including loan documents. Among other things, you want to make absolutely sure your builder doesn't hold a "residual lien" against your home. A residual lien can come into being where the amount your banker agreed to loan you to build was less than your contract price so that you were going to make up the difference out of pocket. In such a case, the lien documents may have been written so that you gave your builder a lien for the full amount of the build then your builder assigned a portion of that lien (the amount of your loan) to your bank. The unassigned part is called a residual lien and, when you gave your builder money directly out of your pocket for that amount, he should have given you a lien release. If your builder doesn't give you a lien release for a residual lien he holds, you'll have a major problem. Since you have an attorney, just mention the possibility to him and ask him to make sure the builder doesn't have a residual. Your builder might not think to check for a residual lien but once you mention it, he should be able to determine if one is in existence. 3) DO NOT WARN YOUR BUILDER that you are planning to fire him or even thinking seriously about doing so. Let your attorney guide you as to when and how to break the news to your builder. 4) Ask your attorney if he will go with you to your banker to discuss your options with regard to financing after firing your builder. Be aware that, as a general rule, your banker is under no obligation NOT to tell your builder that you are thinking about firing him. You MAY be able to impose a confidentiality obligation on our banker by raising the issue as a theoretical one on which you are seeking confidential FINANCIAL advice but that may or may not wash. I suspect tho your builder will be less likely spill the beans prematurely if your lawyer is with you when you talk to the banker. 5) Find out what your state's laws are regarding any mandatory warranties. If, for example, your builder completed the foundation and framing and your state has a mandatory warranty on those items, he SHOULD be on the hook for them even if you fire him before the house is completely finished. But, be aware that even state mandated warranties won't do you one bit of good if your builder declares bankruptcy and gets the bankruptcy court to discharge his warranty obligations. A warranty is only as good as the entity granting the warranty so I wouldn't let trying to hang onto my warranties stop me from firing a crooked GC. 6) Get a good digital camera and digital video camera and document EVERYTHING about the status of the house before you fire the builder. Be sure the time and date stamp on the camera is set correctly. Take about a gazillion photos from every possible angle, close-ups and wide-angle shots. Do one room at a time and stick labels to the walls so that you can know exactly what room and which part of each room each photo is a picture of. Don't forget to photograph the outside of the house and the attic and basement areas as well. Do not let there be a square inch of the house and grounds that doesn't clearly appear in at a couple of photos and videos. Upload everything to your computer and then save it all on CDs or DVD (it'll probably take several) in case your hard drive should fail. And give copies of everything to your attorney. 7) Check with your insurance agent about getting insurance on the partially built house to cover any vandelism that should occur after you fire the builder. You also want to make sure there is PLENTY of liability coverage in case someone should get hurt while on your property. 8) Print out copies of every email you have ever sent or received from your builder (along with every attachment) and put them all in a notebook then give the notebook(s) to your attorney for safe-keeping. If you should wind up in litigation, the courts will expect you to have kept all those documents and not having them could be held against you so save EVERYTHING. Finally, be prepared for a long horrible slog through a legal and financial minefield. It is going to put more stress on your marriage than you would believe. So, make a pact with your spouse that regardless of what happens, the two of you will NEVER EVER EVER blame each other for the mess. Nobody who hasn't been thru this can possibly understand just how bad this can get. If you and your spouse cannot be totally supportive of one another, you very might be better off just letting the crook finish the house - as cheaply as you possibly can - then put it on the market and sell it as quickly as possible to cut your losses. We fired our GC 3 years ago this month. We are only now finally reaching a settlement (still unsigned) with our builder that will result in him releasing the residual lien he holds against our house. We spent the remainder of our construction loan plus another 20% to get the house finished to a point where we could move in and we estimate that it will cost us another $30,000 to finish the things that still remain undone that were supposed to be part of the turn-key build. And we accumulated $20,000 worth of attorney bills. We have foundation problems that will cost about $18,000 to fix and SHOULD be covered by a 10 year statutory warranty from our builder but he has transferred all his assets to his family and declared bankruptcy so.... DH and I are still together and our lives are slowly getting back to normal but he is an absolute saint. I cannot imagine having survived the last three years without him at my side. If you click on my "My Page" link you can email me off line if you want to know more.

We GC'd our own kitchen reno and it went beautifully. None of ours was DIY, all subtrades were pros, and we were without a kitchen for less than a month. A lot of excellent advice above. We found the keys to success were: 1) Personal recommendations for all the trades. And by that I mean we'd either had personal prior experience with them, or we knew people who had. I don't mean that we called their supplied references, I mean they were referenced from people *we* already knew. If you can't do that re. being new to an area, or other reasons, I would reconsider being your own GC. 2) A lot of pre-planning. We didn't rush into the reno, we planned it in some detail over the course of 6-8 months. We had all the supplies (tile, lighting, sinks, faucets, etc ordered and delivered in advance, and the appliances ordered and paid for with delivery scheduled in advance). We planned the timeline in detail as well which leads to the next point: 3) Once you've started, stick to your schedule RELIGIOUSLY! When you're dealing with many subtrades (in our case there were the electricians, tiler, cabinet maker, gas fitter, quartz fabricator/installer, disposal bin firm, and then contractors who did cab tear-out, plumbing, ductwork for the range, drywalling, appliance install, painting, and a bunch of other things) you have to manage the timeline very carefully. None of these guys are going to care if your project gets delayed for some unrelated reason and you want them to come a few days later at the last minute ... they have jobs lined up for other customers that they need to honor. So if you do NOTHING else, ensure that you have every single thing planned and ready for each trade when they arrive. Because they need to get in and out of your job on time or your are screwed (and by screwed I mean potentially without a kitchen for months, and you can't know how painful that is until you've been without one for even a week or so, it's horrible). 4) As mentioned above, make sure you can have someone home at all times. There are always little things that come up (do you want the cab handle at the top or the bottom, do you want the faucet this way or that, light here or there a few inches, etc.) We had the flexibility to work from home when needed (main contractors, tiler, and cabinet and counter installers), but other work we had done evenings and weekend (electrician, gas fitter, etc.). 5) Check for any issues regularly, and before you let the trade go for the day. Keep detailed lists of what you want, and check each item at end of each day and before you let the trade go. E.g., if the item is "prep faucet installed", you check that it's installed the way you want it, facing the right way, the spray hose pulls out properly, it doesn't leak, etc., before you cross it off your list ... but if there are any issues you can either get it fixed right away before paying, if it's at the end of a job, or put it on your list for next day to have fixed if that same trade is back). So bottom line, if you can be there during the job and more importantly if you are organized enough to plan, plan, and plan some more, you can get a fabulous job done and save a boatload in the process. Don't be scared of doing it yourself if you have the time to plan and prepare. Good luck to you!

I grew up with painted cabinets. White ones, even. After a while (several years), the paint didn't looks so good. So they were repainted. Each time took a few coats of paint and the paint started building up. The inset drawers started sticking and the molding details lost their crispness. Later I bought a house that had cherry cabinets. They must be twenty years old and still look great. Moral to this story was that factory finish is much nicer- smoother and more durable- than hand applied. The pics posted of painted cabinets is typically just after painting-not 3-5 years later. One time I do advocate painting wood cabinets is if the cabinet finish has deteriorated beyond repair or yellowed and would need to be completely removed to revarnish. In that case, it's much easier to paint. The other time is if the cabinet is a really cheap grade of inferior wood. (Your cabinets look good in the pic, but I realize it could be different in person.) Whether you paint white or blue depends more on the rest of the house. I do think white has a more generic look to it than a color like butter or sage. I've seen pics of great white kitchens but they've also been expansive with lots of detail. I've also seen several pics of ho-hum white kitchens that are lacking "something". Wood graining does add a subtle texture that standard paint doesn't. Since you're going to paint the walls anyway, why don't you do that first. Then reevaluate whether to paint the cabinets white, a color, or not at all. Maybe photoshopping would help show how possible changes would look.

"The door jam either needs widening by 4 inches, or the door narrowed by 4 inches.....so I have an awesome carved door that no one wants to touch because it's someone else's work.)" Maybe, but the task of modifying and installing a custom door (it's not clear if they need to fabricate a jamb and mortise it and the door for hinges) is a high-risk/low reward proposition. Especially if you want folks to competitively bid the job. Experienced remodelers will tend to take a pass on that kind of job, which leaves you to choose from the pool of inexperienced ones, which shifts the risk to the homeowner. I'm not trying to offend anyone with my comment. Just sharing one contractor's perspective.