Thanks for your comment - I will repost in the remodeling section with your suggestion for the title. Unfortunately I cannot edit or delete this post.

Weekly payment tied to weekly benchmarks sounds fine...

materials should be "supplied" by you and you should know exactly what you need to make decisions on, the hidden stuff also needs to be discussed now. Example, on the flooring, presume its going to be tile, you should already know the type of tile, and the size of the room, but you may also need backer board/subfloor and the contractor should be able to tell you what is needed and should charge you for it in the contract as well as tell you how much of the tile is needed. He should actually get the supplies, including the tile, so he can check for quality, breakage, dye lots as well as have some spares. If he isn't then you need to really "know" what you are doing to avoid an exact repeat of the same problems....the whole purpose of hiring a GC is to have responsibility for coordinating on him, he has the experience, not on you.

I had a contractor that wanted me to supply the materials. What this meant was I would supply the tile, for example and he would supply everything needed to install the tile, which included materials needed to repair the subfloor.

I'm not sure how eager I would be to pay weekly, as I would would immediately wonder what kind of businessman he is that he needs to be financed on a weekly basis. But your market may be different. What is the norm there?

Our GC charges a first bigger payment, then weekly and then a final bigger payment. There is a total number of weekly payments so in our instance where the project is taking longer than expected, we are no longer making weekly payments. What I would look at is what percentage of the total is the final payment? I think it is generally good practice to have enough money due in the final payment to be incentive to finish out the project.

I prefer my GC to buy all the materials. Then if there is a problem with delivery schedule, quality, etc, it is his problem. On our previous bathroom remodel, I did order a few small budget items like the mirror and train rack and such and our GC deducted the cost of those items from our final payment. Having the GC buy everything does mean that you need to be sure of your choices before the contract is signed so they can be specified and accounted for in the cost.

This has "contractor-has-no-cash/credit/cash flow" written all over it. I get money down for large ticket nonrefundable items like countertops, but other than that, my clients are always in front of me financially. I like it like that. If I can't trust them to pay, I shouldn't have picked them.